Google Base: wha?
I don’t get Google Base at all. From the announcement: “This beta version of Google Base is another small step toward our goal, creating an online database of easily searchable, structured information.”
Isn’t that just the web, minus the structured part?
Isn’t the whole genius of the web the realization that the structure isn’t necessary?
And isn’t the very reason for Google’s riches the fact that they figured out how to do the “easily searchable” part without the structure? That they figured out that even when a billion people who are definitely not interested in tagging or categorizing or structuring anything just start cobbling together half-broken HTML pages on whatever topics they like that it SELF ORGANIZES?
Google Base just feels like a throwback to the earliest thinking about online systems, like Xanadu or Cyc or CompuServe or something. Or maybe the semantic web people have infected Google and all is lost.
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It’s just a database, plain and simple. Given an API, this would be a good way to share data. Not a replacement for a good local database like mySQL, but it might help develop distributed apps where a common database is needed, but syncing data is not possible.
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I totally agree with you, I didn’t (and still don’t) see any point in this Google database, but I was frightened if I posted it I would look stupid, or be ejected from Google and killed for going against what is known as right.
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First google base is hard to understand. I did a search and got all crappy results:
Secondly, I don’t understand the thoughts of the VP of Careerbuilder(mentioned here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/first-base.html) who is providing feeds to googlebase. Doesn’t he know that Employers can post jobs directly on googlebase! who the heck will go to careerbuilder & pay hefty fees for jobs???
Thirdly: Any existing business providing feeds to base is crazy & maybe doesnt understand their model!!!!