QuantumT writes "Ars Technica has the details on the unannounced GoogleBase service that will allow anyone with a Google Account to post information and other types of data into a massive, Google-run database. Ars believes that the company isgearing up to take on eBay and Craiglist, which makes sense given the Google Payment service that is in development. Google has commented, saying, 'This is an early-stage test of aproduct that enables content owners to easily send their content to Google. Like our web crawl and the recently released Google Sitemaps program, we are working to provide contentowners an easy way to give us access to their content.' There's a few screenshots as well." Google Developing Database Service Log in/Create an Account | Top | 197 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 197 comments 0: 188 comments 1: 143 comments 2: 92 comments 3: 38 comments 4: 25 comments 5: 13 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Name suggestion (Score:1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25, @06:48PM (#13876396) G-Bay anyone? [ Reply to ThisRe:Name suggestion by altoz (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @07:02PMRe:Name suggestion by Hatta (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:13PMRe:Name suggestion by TummyX (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:30PMRe:Name suggestion by boomgopher (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @10:31PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Content is king (Score:5, Interesting) by BWJones (18351) * on Tuesday October 25, @06:50PM (#13876408) (http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ | Last Journal: Friday October 21, @01:11AM) Perhaps more importantly, this move positions Google as potentially the pre-eminent publishing house with an inherent built in search engine. Anything that goes into the database will be "intimately" searchable. From my perspective as a bioscientist, the ability to be able to search journal articles not just for text, but also for image data or graph data would be absolutely huge.Google has previously posted their position about Google Print here [blogspot.com] where they documented superficially their desire to enable people to search for "books". However, more importantly, it is the content within the "books" that will become more ubiquitous and more available. [ Reply to ThisRe:Content is king by ChrisGilliard (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:01PMRe:Content is king by BWJones (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:04PMRe:Content is king by ChrisGilliard (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:15PMRe:Content is king by Breakfast Pants (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @10:02PMRe:Content is king by holloway (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @11:12PMRe:Content is king by ozmanjusri (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @12:21AMRe:Content is king by holloway (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @12:25AMRe:Content is king by Achromatic1978 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @12:31AMRe:Content is king by plasmodium (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @09:18PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Content is king by Scott7477 (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @11:34PMRe:Content is king by Ruis (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @12:03AMRe:Content is king by NickCatal (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @12:46AM Coral link to pictures (Score:4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25, @06:51PM (#13876418) base.google.com pictures [nyud.net] [ Reply to ThisRe:Coral link to pictures by teodz (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @06:58PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Legal questions? (Score:3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25, @06:51PM (#13876420) What steps will they have to take to discourage people from using this to transmit and store illegal material?Of course, almost every other service on the net has that same basic problem. But if you are trying to establish a gigantic distributed free database, this has got to be one of your main concerns. [ Reply to ThisRe:Legal questions? by temojen (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:04PMRe:Legal questions? by ZachPruckowski (Score:3) Tuesday October 25, @08:04PMRe:Legal questions? by Raindance (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:17PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Legal questions? by FFFish (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:06PM Baffling! (Score:3, Insightful) by The Shrewd Dude (880136) on Tuesday October 25, @06:53PM (#13876432) to post information and other types of dataWhat data is not considered information, and vice-versa? [ Reply to ThisRe:Baffling! by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @07:08PMRe:Baffling! by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @07:16PMRe:Baffling! by temojen (Score:3) Tuesday October 25, @07:13PMRe:Baffling! by Xeger (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:00PMRe:Baffling! by smitty_one_each (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:19PMRe:Baffling! by isny (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:03PMRe:Baffling! by Eil (Score:3) Tuesday October 25, @10:54PMrandom noise, for one by astro-g (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @12:25AM3 replies beneath your current threshold. Cripes! Holy diversity, Batman! (Score:4, Funny) by mister_llah (891540) on Tuesday October 25, @06:53PM (#13876434) (http://llahlahkje.deviantart.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 12, @09:36PM) Is there anything computered-based out there that Google won't be doing in the future?===I can't wait for the Google fashion lines...Actually, I could see them trying to push for rollable LCD panel clothing... ... I digress... just know that in 10 years Google win own the whole mess.Everything. :) [ Reply to ThisRe:Cripes! Holy diversity, Batman! by Harmonious Botch (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @07:03PMThe Internet Bubble, Take 2....Action by iamlucky13 (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:08PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. In broad outlines (Score:5, Insightful) by denissmith (31123) * on Tuesday October 25, @06:53PM (#13876438) In broad outlines, and incrementally, Google seems to be replacing the need for a centralized computer/filestore with an ubiquitous web fileservice. While this may not replace the need for an OS and applications, if I could get access to my information and files securely frome everywhere that I can see a google server it really does change the computer paradigm. [ Reply to ThisRe:In broad outlines by The Clockwork Troll (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @07:36PMRe:In broad outlines by iseff (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @07:59PMRe:In broad outlines by iseff (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @08:17PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:In broad outlines by mcrbids (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:19PMRe:In broad outlines by denissmith (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:18PMRe:In broad outlines by a1cypher (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:15PM Google this, google that! (Score:4, Funny) by ChrisGilliard (913445) <chris&xcoderz,com> on Tuesday October 25, @06:54PM (#13876445) (http://www.xcoderz.com/) Ars believes that the company is gearing up to take on eBay and CraiglistOk, what else is google going to take over? People think they're going to take on Microsoft,Ebay,Craigslist,ISPs,..... The list goes on and on. I'd like to see Google take on the Oil companies next! Maybe they can offer free Gasoline. [ Reply to This Re:Google this, google that! (Score:5, Funny) by TedCheshireAcad (311748) <tedNO@SPAMfc.rit.edu> on Tuesday October 25, @07:13PM (#13876589) (http://slashdot.org/) Maybe they can offer free Gasoline Googleen will be available in an ad-supported context, where you receive free Googleen in exchange for targeted advertisements displayed on your windshield. Of course, Googleen has been engineered by the top Ph.D. minds in the world, so not only will you get 100 miles per gallon, but the Googleen will also clean your engine, and proactively repair problems with your car. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Google this, google that! by ChrisGilliard (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @07:23PMRe:Google this, google that! by Rick Genter (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:25PMRe:Google this, google that! by c_forq (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @08:55PMRe:Google this, google that! by Al_Lapalme (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @10:50PMRe:Google this, google that! by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @07:27PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Google have taken their eyes off the ball (Score:5, Insightful) by Dynamoo (527749) * on Tuesday October 25, @06:55PM (#13876447) (http://www.dynamoo.com/) It's all very interesting and clever.. but I think Google are taking their eyes off the ball here. When Google stop concentrating on trying to search the web and start concentrating on rebuilding it then you're looking at a company playing a high risk game. People with long memories might remember that Microsoft tried to recreate the internet [wikipedia.org] ten years ago with the launch of MSN.. and failed.It would be nice if the PhDs at Google could concentrate on getting good, reliable and consistent results out of their search engine rather than playing around with features like because it "seemed like a good idea at the time". Remember Google Answers [google.com] anyone? That was a white elephant. I think this is going to be a white elephant too.As a commercial enterprise, it seems that Google is in danger of forgetting exactly what its core business really is. [ Reply to This Re:Google have taken their eyes off the ball (Score:4, Insightful) by BWJones (18351) * on Tuesday October 25, @07:00PM (#13876489) (http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ | Last Journal: Friday October 21, @01:11AM) The problem with this is that the structure of the Internet is difficult to navigate and difficult to index a system that is constantly changing. Enforcing some sort of "structure" will make things more easily searched, organized and reliable. There's lots of us PhDs that are interested in indexing information, but for particular questions, you need to be able to structure data in some form that allows accessibility. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Google have taken their eyes off the ball by smallpaul (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:09PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:Google have taken their eyes off the ball (Score:5, Insightful) by kavau (554682) on Tuesday October 25, @07:09PM (#13876560) (http://slashdot.org/) 1. Become the technological leader in your field2. Profit!3. Get fat and lazy4. Microsoft discovers that your field is profitable5. ?????6. Profit (Microsoft, that is)!Maybe Google is trying to avoid this scenario by branching out. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Google have taken their eyes off the ball by Tlosk (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:14PM Re:Google have taken their eyes off the ball (Score:5, Insightful) by Tibet Sprague (778599) on Tuesday October 25, @07:17PM (#13876619) I have seen numerous people claim that Google is starting losing focus or take their eyes off the prize (ball, etc) but I have yet to see any conclusive evidence. The truth is Google has an insane number of smart people working for them and each one is supposed to be using 20% of their time to work on a pet project of sorts. Every so often these projects get released as betas and add to the growing package of google "apps". While many of these apps are still imperfect and unpolished (as befits the beta title) they are all at the least interesting additions to their respective categories. People see this endless flow of new google releases and think they are spreading themselves thin when in fact each "app" is probably being developed by a small group of programmers who are interested and devoted to the project. My points are these: The fact that google is releasing so many products does not mean they have stopped thinking about search. In fact PageRank was tweaked once again just a few days ago. They probably still have a hugs number of employees devoted entirely to search. While their competitors are starting to catch up, Google still has a big lead in the search arena and is far from losing it if only because of mindshare. By releasing so many products in so many areas Google assures themselves of not being left behind in any area of the web. They are testing the waters of RSS (Google Reader), Web Acceleration, VOIP, soon micro-payments and now structured data storage and classifieds and whatever else Google Base will become. In conclusion Google has their foot in every door and whichever ones lead to higher revenue they will follow. I think it's a solid business plan. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:Google have taken their eyes off the ball (Score:4, Informative) by jacksonj04 (800021) <nick@tn-uk.net> on Tuesday October 25, @08:09PM (#13876972) (http://nick.tn-uk.net/) I think Google have done anything but take their eye off the ball. Remember how Froogle and Google Local were once beta projects, and are now integrated with google.com search? And then Google Maps was slipped into the equation. define: has been moved out of a little-known backwater of the site and integrated with google.com...Google having a foot in all the doors simply means they are finding the best way to index and search that information. It won't surprise me if they all end up integrated somewhere with just plain Google Search, to the extent that they lose their own 'section'. Google Base is simply (from what I can tell) a huge database of everything, which (chances are) will end up integrated.I want to be able to log in to Google and have all my own data at my fingertips, easily searchable, and for the engine behind it all to know what I'm after. At the moment, powerful though other web searches may be, Google is the only company to attempt to unify everything for the users. If Google can provide what I'm after, I would be willing to pay a significant amount of money to have them organise all my data, be it news, emails, contacts, files, web history, chats, driving directions, cinema times... the list goes on. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:Google have taken their eyes off the ball (Score:4, Insightful) by MacJedi (173) on Tuesday October 25, @07:28PM (#13876697) (http://www.duke.edu/~jeo4/) and what exactly is the problem with google answers? [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Google have taken their eyes off the ball by That's Unpossible! (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:46PMRe:Google have taken their eyes off the ball by rho (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:35PMRe:Google have taken their eyes off the ball by colonslash (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:36PMNo, Google wants TO BE the ball... by spentrent (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @09:50PMRe:Google have taken their eyes off the ball by Duncan3 (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @10:00PMRe:Google have taken their eyes off the ball by phusikos (Score:1) Tuesday October 25, @11:42PMRe:Google have taken their eyes off the ball by Temporal (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @12:11AM Deep Search (Score:4, Interesting) by evw (172810) <evw@juni p e r . n et> on Tuesday October 25, @06:55PM (#13876452) They've said in the past that the next big step in search is searching databases that other people own. This would seem to be the interface to make that possible. i.e. rather than web crawling to attempt to harvest data, they have people push it to them. Sidesteps the copyright and robots.txt problem. If you want your data to be searchable then you push it to Google. [ Reply to This Google supplants hard drive (Score:5, Insightful) by Wylfing (144940) on Tuesday October 25, @06:56PM (#13876462) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday March 01, @11:10PM) I have maintained for a few years now that ultimately we will all share one big hard drive and its name will be Google. [ Reply to ThisRe:Google supplants hard drive by earthbound kid (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @11:06PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. why? (Score:5, Insightful) by Councilor Hart (673770) on Tuesday October 25, @06:58PM (#13876475) Why would I want to put my information under your control? [ Reply to ThisRe:why? by Colz Grigor (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:12PM Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful) by rackhamh (217889) on Tuesday October 25, @07:13PM (#13876584) (http://www.differentbeats.com/) "Under your control" -- in what sense?You are the one choosing what information to publish, and presumably, you are the only person who can remove or alter the published information. Google is simply acting as a data warehousing service in this case.So you are relinquishing no more control than an author does by making his books available in bookstores that he doesn't own.Unless I've missed your point? [ Reply to This | Parentyou give up freedom, but by circletimessquare (Score:3) Tuesday October 25, @07:21PMRe:why? by gladed (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:29PMRe:why? by glass_window (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:29PMRe:why? by BigGerman (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:38PMRe:why? by daviddennis (Score:3) Tuesday October 25, @09:55PMRe:why? by umeshunni (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @09:35PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Excellant news for contract service providers. (Score:3, Interesting) by stimpleton (732392) on Tuesday October 25, @06:59PM (#13876485) I'm just drawing up a reply to a RFI from a health provider. They are upgrading their medical records database.My solution included oracle on linux servers.I'll just use this instead..but just say I'm providing the infrastructure.Yassah. [ Reply to This Re:Excellant news for contract service providers. (Score:4, Insightful) by iggymanz (596061) on Tuesday October 25, @08:07PM (#13876964) wee little hipaa violation there, but other than that it's a great idea [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Excellant news for contract service providers. by darnok (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @10:58PMRe:Excellant news for contract service providers. by flosofl (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @12:19AM Ads .... (Score:1) by GoodOmens (904827) on Tuesday October 25, @07:00PM (#13876493) (http://www.lineagejunkies.com/) Makes me wonder if they will be searching the data people put in for friendly text-related ads. [ Reply to ThisLess reliance on Adsense by mparaz (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @12:52AM What, really, is it? (Score:3, Insightful) by Tidal Flame (658452) on Tuesday October 25, @07:02PM (#13876505) (http://tidalflame.net/) Am I missing the point, or does this just seem like another version of the internet, except loosely categorized and all stored on Google's servers? What are they planning to achieve with this? I realize that they're integrating a lot of existing Google functionality into it, and I guess that could be useful, but it still seems like it's just Google Internet or something. [ Reply to ThisRe:What, really, is it? by kebes (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:30PMRe:What, really, is it? by EnronHaliburton2004 (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @08:52PM as ever the usual name that google product! (Score:1) by Edzor (744072) on Tuesday October 25, @07:05PM (#13876526) (Last Journal: Monday August 08, @05:42PM) As always with a Google product what will it be called?Doogle? [ Reply to This All Your Base Are Belong to Us (Score:5, Informative) by slashflood (697891) <andreas@NOspAM.roedl.ch> on Tuesday October 25, @07:07PM (#13876543) (http://www.ui-networks.com/) Oh, I just submitted the following story:It seems that Google is going to announce a new service called Google Base [google.com] today at the invite only Google Zeitgeist [google.com] conference. At the moment, we only have a [seweso.com] few [flickr.com] screenshots [telendro.com.es] and a pretty interesting discussion at threadwatch.org. Conflicting rumors have pointed to a new Google database, classifieds like Craigslist, [threadwatch.org]an Ebay contender [redherring.com] or just another way to submit URLs. [ Reply to ThisProposed New Slashdot Story Selection Algorithm by Scott7477 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @12:18AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Only one question... (Score:1) by Deliberate_Bastard (735608) <doslund@cs.u c r . edu> on Tuesday October 25, @07:08PM (#13876551) When developing a new product or service, there's a most important question to ask."What problem does J. Average Person have, that this thing I am selling will solve?"Doesn't matter whether J. Average Person is supposed to buy the product, or simply use it for free, and allow me to selling advertising. Without bait, no one is going to participate.So what is it? What's the bait, here? Why do I want to push my data to Google? What problem that I have does this solve? [ Reply to ThisRe:Only one question... by Reality Master 101 (Score:2) Tuesday October 25, @07:22PM Re:Only one question... (Score:4, Interesting) by kebes (861706) on Tuesday October 25, @08:45PM (#13877160) As I said in another comment, an example of a problem I sometimes have is that I have some content that I would like to share with the world, but no decent way of doing it. Sometimes I can mesh it into Wikipedia or something... but other times there's no place to put it. Or maybe putting it somewhere else is complicated. Like I have a recipe or a cool trick to solve a problem in Linux. I could make an account with some recipe website or with Linuxforum.org or whatever, but that's a pain. I just want to make the information available to people. I could make my own mini-website and host it, but no one would ever find it.But if GoogleBase exists, and I just upload content, and let Google index it for me, I'm done. I can refer friends to it (either via URL or even by describing it, and letting them just do a search for it). I can even upload (non-private) files that I often need to refer to... and then they are always accessible. In fact, since GoogleBase will probably have a private mode, I can use this as a network drive that is accessible anywhere in the world. Not only that, but it does automatic backups and is automatically indexed and searchable. So for semi-private documents that I always need access to, it's great. I post my CV and then I can casually refer somewhere to where it is located. I don't have to pay for webspace.Many people use the GMail File System hack so that they can use their GMail account as if it were a hard drive. Google is formalizing it so that we can have access to data easily. I think this solves alot of problems for alot of users. The tradeoff is that I get free web-hosting and even free network storage, as long as I agree to have them index it. Many people are willing. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Only one question... by Chunni Babu (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @12:37AM Data is only as good as its source... (Score:5, Interesting) by Colz Grigor (126123) on Tuesday October 25, @07:08PM (#13876552) (http://www.miscreants.org/) Again, just because information is out there doesn't mean that it's accurate or complete. Providing a tool to capture more data will have the tendency of diluting the level of accuracy of available information.If this data is ever going to become useful, Google will needs to create a system for moderation of informational accuracy and usefulness. Their page-ranking mechanism is a good start, but I just don't trust it to tell me that the first few results on a subject I'm researching are accurate.This is why Google also needs a trust network. They certainly could begin to leverage Orkut to do this. I'd give more credence to an information source if I knew that someone in my trust network also gave credence to it.Google doesn't seem to have a unified and communicated vision. Sure, they can hire the most talented engineers and they can keep cranking out the coolest toys, but what would actually move the internet forward is a way to combine all of those toys into a single, simple platform. For example, combine Orkut and page ranking. Rank my search results differently than someone else's because they have different trust relationships. In my opinion, Google has had only one real hit so far, and that's Google Earth. With that much corporate intelligence, I'd like to see Google doing more. ::Colz Grigor [ Reply to ThisRe:Data is only as good as its source... by slashflood (Score:3) Tuesday October 25, @07:36PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Isn't Google Base redundant ? (Score:1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25, @07:15PM (#13876598) Ye Olde Way : create content -> host it yourself/at an ISP -> various search engines (including Google) will index it -> others can search it.Ye Google Base Way : create content -> submit to Google Base -> others can search it only though Google.Google would be wasting massive resources in this, if they ever launch it, and their only benefit would be that they would in a way 'own' that content. I don't believe they would be making this content available to MSN or Yahoo. The stench of evil is just too much, Google ! [ Reply to This