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Google branding made many new Refine users think that Refine was a cloud application and that data was uploaded on Google servers.

However, I think that losing GoogleвЂ™s name will help Refine in two ways: I suppose that Google name was kind of a guarantee on the product capability and maturity for some users and this naming helped to democratize the tool. Google branding also help a lot Google Refine marketing and community building. The End of Google Branding Thanks to Google support, Refine is now one of the most mature data cleaning / wrangling tool available. My bet is that Google bought Metaweb Technologies for Freebase data and not for Gridworks / Refine functionality and today they don't see the business case to continue to support Refine. I guess that the current desktop architecture of Google Refine prevents such a migration. Google didn't develop Refine as a cloud based solution, to take advantage of its computing capability. During the two years Refine was with Google, I didn't witness any specific integration with other Google services (like doc, drive or fusion table).

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Why Google stop supporting Google Refine? Google Refine is a desktop based application that can work both offline and online (for reconciliation and web scraping). As Tom Hirst published today, Google Refine is a great entry level Glue Logic tool to create bridges between various application or system.

We are just at the door step of the big data world and Google Refine by lowering the technical barrier to jump in and empower more people for data analysis and processing. The user friendly interface helped thousands of non technical users to take control of their data. A vivid community has emerged opening new horizons to Refine capability. Reconciliation services with more databases have been built, an extension to support RDF extension has been written. Librarians, journalists, data analysts have been using Google Refine to clean and reconcile their data. Over the last 16 months editing this blog, I've seen the tremendous interest for Google Refine from various communities. The 2.6 version being on its way (see this discussion for more details ).

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During the 2010 - 2012 period, with the support of Google engineers and the community three upgrade of Google Refine have been made (2.0 2.1 and 2.5). The freshly renamed Google Refine continued to be an open source project for data cleaning.

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Freebase Gridworks has been renamed Google Refine and the code and documentation moved to a instance. In July 2010 Google acquired Metaweb and by extension, Freebase and Gridworks. This historical link with Freebase is still present in Google Refine, as the solution supports reconciliation against Freebase database. Initially it was a tool designed to support the Freebase database and community for data cleaning, reconciliation and upload. From its first version, Freebase Gridworks was an open source project. Google Refine finds its root in the Freebase Gridworks solution developed by Metaweb Technologies, Inc. Through this post I'd like to give my insight on the reason of this decision and what will be the short terms consequences of it.ДЇirst let's do a brief history of Google Refine.

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Google Refine has always been an open source tool and anyone can commit changes, develop an extension or update the wiki. But first I'd like to clarify what I have read on twitter yesterday night. Refine is already a mature data cleaning tool, this change in leadership will be a major challenge for the tool continuity. Yesterday David Huynh announced that Google will soon stop its active support of Google Refine and count of community to get more involved to growth Refine.

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