An ambitious new Google Inc. service lets anyone upload most anything to a publicly searchable database, potentially laying the groundwork for a foray by the Internet juggernaut into classified advertising.
To help feed its insatiable information hunger, Google Inc. has begun publicly testing Google Base, a service designed to host and make searchable "all types of online and offline content," the Mountain View, California, company announced.
The venture, Google Base, could lead to a vast expansion of its content and signal grander ambitions for the king of online search-related advertising. Google’s stated mission is, after all, nothing less than organizing the world’s information.
Launched as a "beta test," Google Base has the potential to make instantly available a vast sea of content including — but not limited to — recipes, job ads, photos, DNA sequences, real estate listings and individual standalone databases.
The new beta service allows people to post all types of online and offline information and images that will be searchable on Google Base and, depending on their relevance, may be searchable on Google Search, Froogle and Google Local, the company said.
If you have information you want to share with others, but are not sure how to go about gaining an audience, Google Base is for you, said the frequently asked questions section of the new service.
Described as an extension of existing Google content collection efforts, such as Web crawl, Google Base can be used by large companies and individuals alike to post data in the form of categorized items that Google will host and make searchable for free, wrote Bindu Reddy, a company product manager, in Google’s official Web blog.
Normally, it takes Web "crawlers" days or weeks to scour the Web and feed Google’s main search engine with updated information, but they usually cannot penetrate content buried in databases. This tool will make locating anything that has been uploaded nearly instantaneous, provided it finds users willing to provide the content.
Submitters will also be able to describe what they uploaded with keywords — making searches and filters easier and more reliable.
This is all part of our efforts to make it really easy for anyone with information to make it accessible from Google, said Salar Kamangar, vice president of product management at Google. We just felt like this piece was just missing before.
What is less clear is exactly what Google plans to do with what it amasses. The Mountain View-based company said the primary purpose of Google Base’s release is to study and improve how the information is collected and categorized.
Kamangar said the company eventually wants to integrate the results with results from its main search engine, its local search site, which identifies results by geographical location, and its shopping comparison service, Froogle.com.
This beta version of Google Base is another small step toward our goal, creating an online database of easily searchable, structured information, Reddy wrote.
Google has no immediate plans to serve ads on Google Base, a company spokesman said. Examples given of items people might want to post include party and event planning services, recipes, a used car listing and genome of the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Students need as much information as possible when they are searching for the right college or university. Google Base helps us reach students and parents and deliver more of the information they need when making important college decisions, said Hal Higginbotham, president of CollegeBoard.com, as quoted on the Google Blog.
As it stands, Google Base has no mechanism for transacting business, whether buying a car or applying for a job. But its patrons — a job listings service, say — will be able to provide links in whatever they upload to commercial sites that do.
While some observers have speculated that Google is targeting the online classifieds market space, specifically eBay and Craigslist with the service, a Google executive denied that that is the company’s intent.
If Google goes commercial with the new service, which is widely expected, it could pose a formidable threat not only to traditional classified businesses such as newspapers but also online sites like eBay and Craigslist.
Marc Leibowitz, Web search and syndication director, said Google merely wants to offer a way for people who have information to share that is not already on a Web site and being crawled by a search engine to open it up to the public.
In addition, much of the information in Google Base is expected to be noncommercial information, a Google spokesman said. The service is accessible at: http://base.google.com