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."
Good for 'public' sites (Score:4, Interesting)
What exactly goes into base? (Score:4, Interesting)
Could wikipedia be imported to Google base?
Scary Pace (Score:5, Interesting)
API Interface (Score:2, Interesting)
Thoughts?
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.
API? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Data integrity (Score:2, Interesting)
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 public - combined with the usual way of making it searchable in an easy way.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Scary Pace (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it me or does it seem like Google is average 1 new service/product every 2 months or so. This is a scary pace.
I agree. I actually think this can be confusing. It's great they're producing so many interesting things, but I keep having to hear about them by "word of mouth" in online discussions. Otherwise, I wouldn't even know they existed. It would be useful if they actually provided some simple notification of updates to the services they provide, possibly just some small blurb on search result pages or something. And they need to do something like make a menu of all their services just a click away from any main project page, search result page, or any other page from their site. Sure, they have the Google Labs [google.com] page, but at the moment that doesn't even mention Google Base. They need to consolidate navigating through these services in their interface. By the way, have you heard of Google Moon [google.com]?
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)
So.. PageRank? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because if this is just a normal database, meh, I could do that myself. But if I could in some way define a group of webpages and then perform pagerank-intelligent searches within that group, that would be a lot more interesting.
Are people allowed to define new "kinds" of information to search for, or only new attributes? And is Google Base available through a Google API like interface? Because I don't see anything about that on the site right now.
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.
Re:easfdq (Score:4, Interesting)
Or allow machine learning to generate one
Re:Good for 'public' sites (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe until they start noticing that their Google Base content start appearing in their main index, Froogle, and other services. It says this may happen if the relevancy is good enough on Google Base. Quite a deal for being free.
Somebody tell me (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea was that you could do things like: suppose you're looking for a PDA with certain features; say, a keyboard, no more than $ 200, and at least 320x240 screen size. Then you would go to the site, select the item type, and add constraints by selecting attributes from a list, then a relation on that attribute (e.g. equals, or greater than), and then select or enter a value. You would keep adding constraints until all of the ones important to you where there, and then click search.
The idea was to let any interested party add information to the system; "many eyes" would make sure that it was mostly accurate. I wasn't really sure this would work, but Wikipedia later went and kind of proved the viability of it. In the meantime, I had gotten the user interface and database backend to a usable state, but lacked the time to add all sorts of item types, including sensible metadata, and enter some sample information to kick start the system.
Nowadays, I just wait for Google to implement my ideas.
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.
Semantic web, anyone? (Score:1, Interesting)
You first read it here
eBay Killer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So wait... (Score:3, Interesting)
this is everything you (we!) can think of. all on a crisp clear white bckground. think geocities, but you can try and report the user if its spam/vandalism.
only limits seem to be:
-only 30 attributes per item
-no export, only import and display on google at base.google.
both of which might change
sneaky smart bastids.
ebay killer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Go Google!
Re:Scary Pace (Score:3, Interesting)
or, in Arabic, "Google Qaeda" (Score:2, Interesting)