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Google Base Launches
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Nov 16, 2005 01:29 AM
from the google-cheerleading-overlords dept.
from the google-cheerleading-overlords dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As announced on the Google Blog, Google Base has finally launched. According to Google, Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We'll host the items and make them searchable for free."
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Good for 'public' sites (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good for 'public' sites (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good for 'public' sites (Score:5, Funny)
> obviate the need for [...]
Q: How many ADD kids does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Hey, wanna go ride bikes?
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Re:Good for 'public' sites (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Good for 'public' sites (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good for 'public' sites (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not certain that it's "good" for anything. Pretty much all the previous Google apps were something you could "get" just by checking into it quickly. However, most regular people don't truly understand the concept of a formal database. As a result, we usually need other metaphors to help them understand the databases their using. (e.g. A filing system, a card index, etc.)
What Google Base is proposing is very interesting (though of dubious use at the moment), but I just don't think that users are going to be rushing to grab ahold. Users will continue to keep their recipes on their computers or Recipe Database websites, jobs will continue to be posted on Monster, and life will otherwise continue on as is.
Nice try Google, but I think this one has a long way to go until it's out of Beta.
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Re:Good for 'public' sites (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that I am thinking about uploading my local job site's content just so that i can actually search it is beside the point, right?
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Re:Good for 'public' sites (Score:5, Funny)
It states: "You have my word on that my soul is pure and clean. I have never commited any sins or other bad acts, so please skip the 2 cents offers."
but I would contend he has already in the ad made at least the following sins:
- lying (about never ever having done anything even remotely bad)
- selling his soul (a sin in the eyes of a overwhelmingly large portion of religious humans, incidentally the group that are most likely to accept the concept of a soul in the first place, and many of whom would not even accept the validity of trying to sell it or that the seller is actually the owner of his own soul)
So the soul is obviously not in mint condition
Most buyers would probably want a guarantee on the souls condition from a higher authority if quality is meant to be a selling point.
In addition there is little product information, nor any guarantee or expiration date (the expiration date would be the time for which the seller could guarantee conferred ownership of the soul). If such a date is unknown to the seller many buyers could arrange such a date for their own purposes as long as it does not include any reverse transferral back to the seller. And most important of all the seller has not defined exactly what his soul is, most buyers would for example feel that they could litigate if buying the soul does not imply a full 100% direct control over the sellers soul at all times including all which that implies (by tradition; the sellers thoughts, actions, feelings, senses and soforth).
And what of those who would be interested in buying the soul for official purposes such as proving they have a soul (at least one)? If you have a deed to a human soul (even if transfer has not occured yet) could one not claim to be eligible to human rights, nationality, etceterea? Perhaps absurd right here and now but some time in the future it might not be, it could be a legal loophole for synthetic intelligences to gain human rights if otherwise denied such. All of this is a seperate futures market but does make it neccessary that the sale has an approved legal status in whatever human justice system the sale takes place, the seller needs to provide documentation to such effect if this is the market he's going for.
Any possibilites of "try before you buy"? What are the delivery arrangements?
What are the contractual agreements for exchange of the money and the soul? Almost all buyers would agree to an infinite sum if the transfer is immediate and includes the traditional implications.
The seller should be noted that all things considered the likely buyers would want the traditional contractual arrangements and a signature in the sellers blood witnessed by the buyer or representatives and confirmed by DNA comparison of the blood with three sample biopsis from any part of the sellers body, internal or external.
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Has to be said (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Has to be said (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Has to be said (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Has to be said (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Has to be said (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Has to be said (Score:4, Funny)
You have no chance to survive make your time.
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Oh great (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks, google
Data integrity (Score:5, Insightful)
I can just see things happening like a school putting up all of their course information and not keeping it up to date.
Re:Data integrity (Score:5, Informative)
The company I work for has been participating in this for a few months now. We upload content once per night. Data items that were in the feed from the night before are removed if they aren't in the most current feed.
Data is expired if there is no activity on it after a period of time. There is also an expiration date.
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Like Froogle (Score:5, Informative)
This is more or less what was done with companies wishing to have their product database indexed within Froogle.
It was actually a nice implementation for a complicated process, and it only took them a week to approve our data feed and begin listing our items.
We upload a new feed as frequently as we need to.
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Re:Data integrity (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine it would be quite common for someone from an IT department to hear about Base, decide to put up ad hoc info about his organisation, then forget about it. That's far less likely for a website.
Further to that, websites are currently organisations' primary presence on the internet. A secondary presence like Base is likely to fall by the way side before their website does.
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Re:Data integrity (Score:5, Informative)
----
The most effective item communicates a clear message to a targeted audience. Once you determine whom you want to reach and develop appropriate text, you need to create an item that will inform users. The Google Base Editorial Guidelines will help you create effective items to meet your goals
Underlying all the Editorial Guidelines are two simple principles:
* Be honest, accurate, and factual.
* Clearly and accurately describe your message.
Our ultimate goal is your success, and we believe that providing a great user experience is the best way to ensure it. To submit items to Google, you must adhere to these guidelines.
Use Standard Punctuation
* No repeated and unnecessary punctuation or symbols.
* Your title may not contain an exclamation point.
Use Standard Capitalization
* No excessive capitalization such as "FREE" or "GOOGLE BASE."
* Capitalization of the first letter of each word within a URL is permitted.
No Repetition
* Avoid gimmicky repetition.
Use Correct Spelling
* Check that you use correct spelling.
Use Proper Grammar
* Your item text must be in relevant, logical sentences and must contain grammatically correct spacing.
* The use of symbols, numbers, or letters must adhere to the true meaning of the symbol.
No Unacceptable Phrases
* Your item cannot contain universal call-to-action phrases such as "click here," "link here," "visit this link," or other similar phrases that could apply to any item, regardless of content.
* Use a call-to-action unique to the information you provide.
No Inappropriate Language
* Your item cannot contain offensive or inappropriate language.
Adhere to the Program Policies
* As a business, Google must make decisions about where we draw the line in regards to the items we accept. We, therefore, may not accept items containing some content or relating to certain products or services. We reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the items we accept on our site, as noted in our terms and conditions. Please note that the decisions we make concerning items in no way affect the search results we deliver. To learn more, please review our Program Policies.
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What exactly goes into base? (Score:4, Interesting)
Could wikipedia be imported to Google base?
Google Consolidating All Info For Advertising? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many independent websites that offer recipes and make a few bucks with Google Ads. Now if users start entering all their recipes in Google Base, google can still run the advertisement but no longer has to pay a third party.
News For Nerds, is technically an item that could also be entered in the Base. In theory, with all the editorial mistakes and dupes, that we all know and love, the only thing that's really holding everything together is the community.
If they host everything, and it's better than all the websites that host their own info in order to run advertisements, then those websites will disappear with time.
Re:Google Consolidating All Info For Advertising? (Score:5, Insightful)
You make that sound as if it's a little thing. Slashdot is all about the community. If I want news (and I do), I read other sites - Ars, The Register, heise, and others (freshmeat comes to mind for the Linux geeks). If I wanted to know stuff even faster (and I don't), I guess I'd subscribe to a million blogs. Anyway, Slashdot certainly isn't about the news, it probably makes for one of the worst news outlets ever. But Slashdot has a one of a kind community. It's mostly just really, really large, which entails that there are a lot of idiots in there, but a few smart people, too, and usually a real expert on every issue. The news stuff is really just a way to make a substantial percentage of those people focus on a single issue. I think posting random computer-related topics from Wikipedia would accomplish much the same - and in all likelihood it would still be news more often, too.
Sorry for going on a wild tangent here, I sometimes feel like I have to justify why I'm still reading Slashdot after such a long time.
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Scary Pace (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Scary Pace (Score:5, Informative)
You could always join the Google Friends newsletter:
http://www.google.com/contact/newsletter.html [google.com]
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Re:Scary Pace (Score:5, Funny)
They do, it's called the Slashdot home page [slashdot.org]. In fact, there's even a simple reminder mechanism called Google Dupes.
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It sounds great, just like Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It sounds great, just like Wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
And, of course, it is a wiki.
Google Base is not an encyclopedia and it is not a wiki. It is offering a much more flexible way of storing data while making it pu
So wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't work for me (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Didn't work for me (Score:3, Informative)
Just sayin... (Score:5, Funny)
API? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:API? (Score:5, Insightful)
The one factor that will keep this happening is performance and speed. Adding an additional 2 hops for database content won't make much sense for web applications. I can't see replacing local network queries with external queries to Google's Base system. Good call though on the API.
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Re:API? (Score:5, Insightful)
The other (probably the most important) problem will be with legal options (like terms of use).
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I'm disappointed... (Score:4, Funny)
Check out the program policies page (Score:4, Informative)
The list of banned content is great!
Hacking and Cracking Sites - Posting is not permitted for the promotion of hacking or cracking. For example, items must not provide instructions or equipment to illegally access or tamper with software, servers, or websites.
Aids to Pass Drug Tests - Posting is not permitted for the promotion of products such as drug cleansing shakes and urine test additives.
Too much!
Hmm...Porn? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Adult) Posting is not permitted for the promotion of child pornography or other non-consensual material.
Does that mean people are allowed to post most of their pr0n? That would be...disturbing...Interesting for others, but not for the soccer moms.
Re:Hmm...Porn? (Score:4, Funny)
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druggle (Score:5, Funny)
open the API, many sites suddenly become redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think such sites are kaput, because the retail experience holds something of value in and of itself (all the customer care bits). But Google gets a helluva lot more powerful, certainly.
Copyright violations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who is going to police all this aggregated, easily searched content? The only rational strategy for google is to wash their hands of it and have some kind of content editors responsible for acting on complaints.
Sure, this issue isn't exactly new to the internet, but by storing it, indexing it, making a tidy profit from it (via adwords) and no doubt painting a nice, publically available API over it, I find it hard to believe it won't be long before various organisations are up in arms.
easfdq (Score:5, Interesting)
Sergey: Hey Larry, what if we could trick our users into supplying structure along with their data?
Larry: Why, we would rule the world!
[Larry and Sergey burst into song...]
~
But seriously, this is way cool. Here's where Google Base could go from here:
1. Allow more complex data types (the AJAX interface is beautiful and simple, but really limiting... maybe allow more complex types to be built through an API?) I'm thinking of structures and some kind of instantiation system.
2. Publish a really rich library of types. What they've got right now is a good start, but more common types will prevent people from creating redundant and not-quite-identical types. For instance, if there had been a "Slashdot geek" category, we wouldn't all have had to create our own when we entered ourselves into the 'Base after reading this headline.
3. Allow data to be restricted to groups of users. Google already has concepts of users and groups, so this is a no-brainer... a few customized viewing pages, and it could replace Flickr, Blogs,
(about the subject title... my cat wrote it just now when he jumped onto my laptop, and it seemed as good as anything I was about to come up with)
Re:easfdq (Score:4, Interesting)
Or allow machine learning to generate one
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It's broken. (Score:5, Funny)
I cannot find any porn. I think it is broken.
What about copyright? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hosting Images and API's (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an example. [google.com]
Frankly, I'm more interested in when the API's come out for this thing. The kind of apps people will build that take advantage of this will be quite interesting. Hmm... Things might get pretty interesting pretty fast once the API's are out.
Attributes by popularity (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of having strict schemas which will never be quite right you can just add whatever attribute you like and see which attributes are popular for the type of entity you are entering.
Re:World Domination (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:World Domination (Score:4, Insightful)
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