From a general user perspective, it is unclear how much added benefit can be derived from such constructed KBs, given the remarkable ability of Google and other search engines to provide rapid answers even to such questions as “Which European countries are landlocked?” (typed without quotes—with quotes, Google finds the top answer using True Knowledge), or “How many Supreme Court justices did Kennedy appoint?” Nonetheless, both Google and Microsoft have recently launched vast “knowledge graphs” featuring thousands of relations among hundreds of millions of entities. The purpose is to provide direct answers (rather then merely retrieved web page snippets) to query terms and natural language questions, and to make inferences about the likely intent of users, such as purchasing some type of item or service. 