At StartupSchool '08 Peter Norvig answered a question about Google's take on the Semantic Web. The question was accusatory in the sense of "Hey, why aren't you playing nice?" Norvig disparaged the need for structured data on the web, presumably because his natural language lab is good enough that Google doesn't need explicit annotations to grab semantics.

I think this technology is the same as Direct Answers from three years back. It could do capitols and geography facts back then. It seems there is a new module for genealogical relationships.