Semantic Web
highest number in four years, worried about Web security.
This was up from 37% in the second half of 2010, accord-
ing to Internet Retailer.
In response to growing concerns, Google announced in
late 2011 that users launching searches from Google’s home-
page would be utilizing an encrypted search as signified by
the address https://google.com, rather than http://google.
com. The ‘‘https’’ signaled a SSL-protected search. The use
of the SSL search hid the search history of the user from
‘‘hackers, school administrators, and nosy corporate network
admins,’’ according to Ryan Singel in Wired, but it did not
hide the search history from Google unless the user turned
off Web history. Google also continued to add SSL encryp-
tion to its cloud services, and its popular Gmail was
encrypted by default.
As the dominant protection scheme, SSL encryption was
constantly under attack from hackers and criminals, creating
an ongoing battle between security experts and the would-be
attackers. With SSL, much depended on the validity of
security certificates. In 2010, Wired contributor Singel
reported on ‘‘internet spying boxes’’ designed to intercept
communications without breaking the encryption. These
types of stories again prompted reflection on protocols like
SET but failed to revive it as a widely used security method.
S E E AL S O
Digital Wallet; Electronic Payment; Encryption;
Transaction Issues.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Larsen, Amy K. ‘‘It Pays to Be Secure.’’ Information Week, May 31,
1999.
Marlin, Steve. ‘‘SET Making Slow Progress in Banking Arena.’’
Bank Systems & Technology, August 1999.
Moore, Stefany. ‘‘Consumers Express Greater Concern About
Online Security.’’ Internet Retailer, May 11, 2011. Available
from http://www.internetretailer.com/2011/05/11/consumers-
express-greater-concern-about-online-security.
Morgan, Cynthia. ‘‘Dead Set Against SET?’’ Computer World,
March 29, 1999.
Savitz, Eric. ‘‘Payments 2.0: Drafting Off the E-Commerce and
Social Wave.’’ Forbes, September 26, 2011. Available from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/09/26/
payments-2-0-drafting-off-the-e-commerce-and-social-wave.
Singel, Ryan. ‘‘Google Encrypts Search to Thwart WiFi
Hackers.’’ Wired, October 18, 2011. Available from http://
www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/google-search-https.
———. ‘‘Law Enforcement Appliance Subverts SSL.’’ Wired,
March 24, 2010. Available from http://www.wired.com/
threatlevel/2010/03/packet-forensics.
SEMANTIC WEB
Considered to be the next stage in Web evolution, the
Semantic Web is a web of information linked in a way that
lets humans and computers share, process, transform, and
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF E-COMMERCE, 2ND EDITION
(c) 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
assemble data both directly and indirectly. The idea of a
Semantic Web was conceived in the late 1990s by Tim
Berners-Lee, the man credited with creating the World
Wide Web. The Semantic Web is a joint effort led by the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization
with the goal of providing ‘‘a common framework that
allows data to be shared and reused across application,
enterprise, and community boundaries.’’ Basically, the
Semantic Web pulls data—resources—from the existing
World Wide Web in order to construct applications that
assimilate related but diverse data from a number of differ-
ent sources. The entire World Wide Web then becomes a
database that functions as a universal medium for the
exchange of information and knowledge.
INTEROPERABILITY STANDARDS
Since the Web was conceived in the early 1990s (a version
now considered Web 1.0), content has been available, search-
able, readable, and understandable to humans through such
interoperability standards as HyperText Transfer Protocol
(HTTP), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and
Extensible Markup Language (XML). During the 2000s,
the era of Web 2.0, it became easier for people to use the
Web for publishing their own content in blogs, podcasts, and
wikis. According to the article ‘‘The Semantic Web: Meaning
and SOA’’ by James Kobielus, the Semantic Web, sometimes
called ‘‘Web 3.0,’’ ‘‘brings non-human content consumers—
including services, applications, bots, and other automated
components—into the loop.’’
The traditional World Wide Web is a document web.
In other words, it contains information in the form of
documents. Since a computer cannot actually understand
the information or documents it accesses, the results of a
typical Web search must be read and interpreted by a
human before any useful information can be determined.
In contrast, the Semantic Web gives computers the capa-
bility to understand the nature of data in one location and
map it to other data repositories, thereby creating a web of
meaning.
The Semantic Web is based on three core interoper-
ability standards: XML, Resource Description Framework
(RDF), and Web Ontology Language (OWL). While XML
identifies metadata elements on the Web, RDF describes the
traits associated with those elements, and OWL reveals how
the elements and their traits relate to each other. As com-
puter-readable definitions supply not only the meaning of
the data, but also rules for logical reasoning in using the data,
the Semantic Web allows humans and computers to work
smoothly with the same information.
ROLE IN E-COMMERCE
The Semantic Web has the potential to revolutionize
e-commerce. As it continues to gain momentum, increasing
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September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks: Impact on E-commerce
numbers of e-businesses are turning to Semantic Web
technologies. Many common business applications, such as
calendar and mail tools, already consist of semantic data that
can be easily integrated with proprietary systems. Companies
such as Zepheira have been established to help e-commerce
sites build systems around Semantic Web standards.
Computer scientists have explored ontologies to rep-
resent the types of products and services offered via the
Web. In order for consumers and businesses to search for
and locate information that suits their needs effectively, a
generic vocabulary is essential. Computer engineer Martin
Hepp explained in his essay ‘‘GoodRelations: An Ontol-
ogy for Describing Products and Services Offers on the
Web’’ that it is necessary to describe the relationships
between Web resources, offerings made through those
Web resources, legal entities, prices, and terms and con-
ditions associated with the desired product or service. To
address this issue, Hepp has developed GoodRelations, a
standardized vocabulary for product, price, and com-
pany information that can be embedded into existing
Web content and can be processed by other computers.
Google and Yahoo! are two main supporters of
GoodRelations.
SE E A LS O Berners-Lee, Tim; Web 2.0.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, William M., and F. Douglas Roberts. ‘‘Business Tools:
The Next Quantum Leap.’’ Strategic Finance 91, no. 7
(January 2010): 29–35.
Baumann, Michael. ‘‘Pew Report: Expert Opinion Divided on
Web 3.0.’’ Information Today, July/August 2010.
Hepp, Martin. ‘‘GoodRelations: An Ontology for Describing
Products and Services Offers on the Web.’’ Proceedings of the 16th
International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge
Management (EKAW2008), Acitrezza, Italy, September 29–
October 3, 2008. Springer LNCS, Vol. 5268, 332–47.
Kobielus, James. ‘‘The Semantic Web: Meaning and SOA.’’
Business Communications Review 37, no. 10 (October 2007):
30+. EBSCOhost.
Metz, Cade. ‘‘Web 3.0.’’ PC Magazine, April 10, 2007. Available
from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2102852,00.asp.
Rapoza, Jim. ‘‘Spinning the Semantic Web.’’ eWeek, June 4,
2007.
Runciman, Brian. ‘‘Isn’t It Semantic?’’ IT Now 48, no. 2 (March
2006): 18–21.
Weinberger, David. ‘‘The Dream of the Semantic Web.’’ KM
World, March 1, 2009. Available from http://www.kmworld.
com/Articles/News/News-Analysis/The-dream-of-the-Semantic-
Web–52764.aspx.
World Wide Web Consortium. ‘‘W3C Semantic Web Frequently
Asked Questions.’’ November 12, 2009. Available from http://
www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ.
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(c) 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001,
TERRORIST ATTACKS:
IMPACT ON
E-COMMERCE
In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on
the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in
Washington, D.C., it was common for social and political
commentators to proclaim that ‘‘everything has changed.’’
While the geopolitical and domestic landscape transformed
in accordance with this pronouncement, the business world
weighed up the implications of this changed environment
for the future of e-commerce. Situating the terrorist attacks
in the midst of a global economy heading into recession
and an Internet economy still dusting itself off from the
dot-com shakeout of 2000, analysts saw several different
short-term and long-term scenarios for e-commerce. The
very novelty of the situation—an attack on U.S. soil, the
subsequent anthrax attacks, and the fear and uncertainty
they created—contributed to the problem facing analysts
in trying to sketch out a clear forecast for the impact of
the attacks.
By the early 2010s, analysts were able to put this event
into a broader context of America’s role as an economic
superpower. Even a decade after the attacks took place,
September 11 was still alluded to as a turning point that
shaped the direction that e-commerce has taken and would
continue to take in the future.
IMMEDIATE EFFECTS
According to the comparison-shopping site BizRate.com,
online retailing sales fell to 85% of their normal volume
in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Online retail
sales the day before the attacks totaled $92.4 million; by
September 17, sales were down to $82.5 million—a
respectable total, considering the gravity of the situation
and the broader fears about recession that the attacks
helped fuel. However, there was no doubt that consumer
confidence had been damaged, and the attacks certainly
had a dramatic impact on an economy already in a
precarious situation. The airline, tourism, and insurance
industries were seriously damaged, and this had conse-
quences throughout the economy.
Online revenue for the month of September fell 15%
from the month before, although that was largely due to the
impact of the attacks on the largest e-commerce sector: the
travel industry. On the other hand, Nielsen/NetRatings
and Harris Interactive reported that online retail sales in
September 2001 totaled $4.7 billion, compared with
$3.1 billion the previous September. BizRate.com fig-
ures indicated that, overall, consumers had not lost their
taste for e-commerce, and online shopping performed
relatively well over the 2001 holiday season, particularly
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF E-COMMERCE, 2ND EDITION