Google Base Launches 337
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."
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Restricted to "content owners"? (Score:2, Insightful)
It sounds great, just like Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
So wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:World Domination (Score:4, Insightful)
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: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.
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.
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.
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?
30 Day Expiration? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm kinda confused. Is this only referring to the actual commercial items being put up for sale, or is applying to most everything?
I was going to tell my fiancee about this and get her started on creating her own model horse database (she's a collector). I don't think it would be a good way to go if the above is true.
Could somebody clarify this for me and/or show me some sort of good out-of-the-box software that could be used in this way (collection of items, with pictures, description, etc.).
Re:API? (Score:2, Insightful)
I know! Just imagine: the sophistication of a MySQL database plus the speed of an HTTP connection!
It's sort of like putting your money in a piggybank -- a piggybank not in your bedroom, but on *the other side of town*.
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.
What about copyright? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Data integrity (Score:1, Insightful)
I think items automatically expire within a maximum of 31 days.
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.
Re:API? (Score:5, Insightful)
The other (probably the most important) problem will be with legal options (like terms of use).
'WTF' (Score:2, Insightful)
So I tried again with another set of random chars with the same result.. so I thought wtf?! Its my item, I decide what it is called and how it should be spelled!
So for fun I tried again with 'wtf' and strangely it was accepted and I was presented with a new screen titled 'wtf - edit item'
'lol' is also accepted by 'lmao' is not..
Well thats the extent of my scientific research so far on this issue.
Re:Data integrity (Score:3, Insightful)
s/this/the Internet/g;
Yes, sure it will be subject to deliberate mischief. But the same goes for the Internet as a whole—because, well, those pesky humans are using it.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic about it. The problems of spam, mistakes, and deliberate mischief aren't technical ones, they're social ones. That's why I think that technological advances for acquiring information are more of a good thing than a bad thing. Don't hail the information you get as the Ultimate Truth ("I saw it on the Internet, it must be true!")—rather, as always, proceed with caution...
Nope. Google is the Arkwright of Information (Score:3, Insightful)
You see, people don't really want computers, they just want the services they provide.
Isn't this scary? (Score:2, Insightful)
As people like to say: Trust is good, control is better