More specifically, he made FreeBase, which Google bought and then extended into the Knowledge Graph, before eventually shutting off the original, open/"free" database.

That being said, as the developer of the system that Google is built upon these days, if he's got a version 2, people really should be interested in that, as obviously his version 1 worked pretty well. And if anyone wants to strip the competitive advantage away from Google, supporting Underlay and it's place in the public domain would be extremely powerful.