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Microsoft's Answer to Google Base
douglips writes "Today Information Week is reporting on a forthcoming service from Microsoft intended to compete with Google Base. Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Google Base, the Microsoft project code named 'Fremont' will focus solely on classified ads. It will also allow restricting items to various audiences such as social networks or domain names. At this point, though, it appears to be a beta restricted to Microsofties." From the article: "In building Freemont, Wiseman and his five-person crew tried to make it both personal for people who only want to trade among family, friends and colleagues, while also providing the option of a public posting. Classifieds is a growing piece of the booming online advertising market that's expected to reach $13.8 billion by 2007, surpassing advertising spent on magazines, according to JupiterResearch. During that timeframe, spending on display ads and online classifieds together are expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent. "
From November 30... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/30/054425 6&tid=109&tid=95
Before this post, I'd never heard of Google Base. For anyone else in that boat, here's the URL:
:)
http://base.google.com/base/default
And yes, it shows up very high on the list of hits if you Google for "Google Base"
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
With all their wizardry, maybe they could use it to find posts like this one from 2 days ago!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
... I'm here only to see the bashing :)
> Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Google Base
So instead of something cool, open ended and something that will have uses its designers never imagined (like the Internet itself) they have made something boring, predictable and something that's been done about 100 times before.
Congratulations.
Oh yeah, and they are Wal-Marting a bunch of small local businesses like newspapers and craigslist. Nice.
Today Information Week is reporting on a forthcoming service from Slashdot intended to compete with Slashdot. Instead of the freewheeling anything-goes nature of Slashdot, the Slashdot project code named 'dupe' will focus solely on repeating previous stories. At this point, though, it appears to be a beta restricted to Slashdotters.
This sounds more like direct completion to craigslist rather than Google base.
But, I guess doing the whole clash of the titans thing, e.g. Microsoft vs. Google, does make the story sound a bit more sexy...
Google Base is not just classifieds plus some other free-wheeling stuff. Google Base is obviously an attempt by Google at creating/owning the Semantic Web, and a pretty damn good one at that.
"Wiseman and his five-person crew tried to make it both personal for people who only want to trade among family, friends and colleagues"
Who the hell would want to do this? Just give it to one of them. I would want a service where I can post a classified to people who *aren't* family, friends, and colleagues.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
29 comments and not a single "All your base..." joke. Gotta be a record.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
... as more people get on the band wagon the harder it is for the pony to pull it.... and the market gets strained....
of course the difference here is going to be determined by how well such online classified reduce the use of ebay....
And there is nothing stopping google or anyone else from also providing such classified service.
Why would MS be announcing this now?
T0 get the competition going or are they just market testing?
If the market isn't there, and they drop it... it won't be the first time.... that is what market testing is for... and MS is really little more than a marketing company...
Who knows, maybe the traditional paper based classified publishers, who really know teh ins and outs of alot of the process, have never thought of doing it online...
MS wants a piece of which pie now?
Well, Craigslist is JUST for the classifieds side of things, much like MS' version of this. Google base, however, can be used for a plethora of different DB work, beyond just simple froogle item ads or such.
Google Base Beta? That's the followup to Foxbase Alpha, isn't it?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
I can understand people knowing that my car is a 2004 Honda Civic. Maybe Google will try to sell me parts, and maybe they can provide me with an online car maintenance schedule automatically as part of their master plan to dominate all information. But what else do they ask for? What else do they want to know?
Is it basically a volunteering of household and personal financial information, much like MyPoints is (only you earn 'points' there. Not dissing, I worked there.)?
I'm genuinely interested in the benefit to the user, and not just 'because it's a Google service and it's there'.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Maybe but this analyst mentions a few reasons you may want to restrict the audience for a posting.
No sex is worth 30 grand.
They'll frecking bury it, they have done it before, they will do it again, ....
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Who modded this guy up? As has been discussed 2^oo times before, the editors probably know full well what they're doing, but they do dupes for any combination of the following reasons:
a.) Bring in more advertising revenue, because a large portion of the slashdot crowd (myself included) read these dupes, having at least some idea that we're reading a dupe.
b.) People still click on the dupes, generating additional revenue for Slashdot from the advertisers that pay by-the-click.
c.) Some people have claimed before that they 'like the dupes', since they might have missed it the previous time around. (I guess they can't click on yesterdays news? Don't ask me to explain their logic...i dont understand it either.)
What amazes me the most about this whole dupe phenomenon is that there is not enough technology news that they already have their hands full. Another possiblility would be that they must have at least 1 (or preferably 2) articles related to google and/or microsoft everyday.
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
Actually this is not so similar to Google Base, but a more direct (and small-thinking) rip off of Craigslist, as far as I can see. There is the similarity that Microsoft also have a search engine to directly map over this data, but eWeek are going much too far (also in http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1877217,00.as p [eweek.com], linked) in ignoring the fundamental differences between a community listing site, an auction site (where the role of the provider is much more hands-on) and the need for Google to get their engine to work with sites dynamically generated from a back-end database...
Posting anonymously to avoid karma whoring