Google Developing Database Service

QuantumT writes "Ars Technica has the details on the unannounced Google Base service that will allow anyone with a Google Account to post information and other types of data into a massive, Google-run database. Ars believes that the company is gearing up to take on eBay and Craiglist, which makes sense given the Google Payment service that is in development. Google has commented, saying, 'This is an early-stage test of a product that enables content owners to easily send their content to Google. Like our web crawl and the recently released Google Sitemaps program, we are working to provide content owners an easy way to give us access to their content.' There's a few screenshots as well."

Comments

Total. Fucking. Chaos.

[DysenteryInTheRanks]

Congratulations, Google, you have solved the easiest part of classified ads, online auctions, and publishing: stuffing the information into distinct fields in a database.

Now you just need to figure out how to marshall data into canonical fields for each major use scenario, mark those schemas prominently for easy reference, and police the system against abuse like spam, scams and plagarism.

Judging by the state of your core search system, this will take anywhere from seven years to several centuries.