Sounds like a much simplified version of Douglas Lenat's Cyc project [1], which has been going since the mid eighties and is attempting to build a structured knowledgebase/ontology of everyday knowledge. They have freely downloadable subset called OpenCyc [2]. It seemed pretty impressive last time I looked at it.
>Lenat was frustrated by Automated Mathematician's constraint to a single domain and so developed Eurisko; his frustration with the effort of encoding domain knowledge for Eurisko led to Lenat's subsequent (and, as of 2008, continuing) development of Cyc. Lenat envisions ultimately coupling the Cyc knowledgebase with the Eurisko discovery engine.
I don't know what he intends to do with it from there, but it could potentially make for some very powerful AIs.
Yes, simplification + open API is at the heart of the project.
The first one because it makes people actually want to use the service, the second one because it helps having up to date data about all sort of things.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc
[2] http://www.cyc.com/platform/opencyc