Metaweb, the San Francisco startup that runs the Freebase open database of 12 million interconnected entries on people, places, and things, has become part of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), the Mountain View, CA, search giant announced on its company blog today. 

Google said it hopes the acquisition well help it upgrade its search engine so that it can come up with better answers to complex queries such as "colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000." Google said it plans to maintain Freebase "as a free and open database for the world … Better yet, we plan to contribute to and further develop Freebase and would be delighted if other web companies use and contribute to the data." 

Metaweb was founded in 2005 by Tellme Network veteran John Giannandrea and former Applied Minds executive Robert Cook; terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed.

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Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at [email protected], call him at 415-796-3024, or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.