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Platform · Entity & Knowledge Graph

Definition

Freebase was a large, open knowledge base of structured data about entities — people, places, organizations, and concepts — operated by Google from 2010 until its official shutdown in 2016. Its data was migrated to Wikidata, where it continues to influence knowledge graph construction and entity representation. Freebase matters historically because its data architecture influenced the design of both Google’s Knowledge Graph and Wikidata — the two most important entity authority sources for AI systems today. Understanding Freebase’s legacy helps explain why Wikidata uses the structured, relationship-oriented data model it does, and why entity IDs and sameAs relationships are so central to knowledge graph construction. Freebase is the ancestor of the entity infrastructure that AI search depends on.

Wikidata

Knowledge graph

Entity ID

Google Knowledge Graph

sameAs array

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