alex.moskalyuk

Google Base is out, and while many are quick to point out Google launching a Craigslist competitor, a statement like that implies Craigslist had a business model to begin with. Supr.c.ilio.us, out of all places, has the best metaphor to describe the new endeavour - Google Base is a Flickr of well, everything.

One new and different thing about Flickr, as compared to gazillion of other photo-storing and photo-sharing sites, is the public visibility associated with photos. Suddenly people stopped treating all of their photos as private and felt it was okay to upload some for others to see, and tag. And that’s why Flickr is such an endless (or time-wasting, if you’re trying to get things done) experience. Each photo leads to another photo by the same person, or to another photo tagged with the same tag, or to another photo in the same set. The hierarchical organization of person -> album -> photo is gone, and people can literally spend days and nights just browsing Flickr and finding some gems.

Google Base is similar to Flickr in the way that you can upload some of your data in order to make it public, and you’d help others find your data by providing proper tags (they call them attributes). It’s dissimilar to Flickr, since it’s not limited to photos - it’s jokes, recipes, articles, videos, ads, etc. It’s a mix of Wikipedia, Craigslist and GeoCities centered around providing endless flow of information on some large topic (like cars). What’s in it for Google? Pageviews. A page with a chocolate cake recipe is bound to attract some dessert lovers, which would probably benefit from contextual ads. What’s in it for Web users? SearchEngineWatch suggests it’s the speed of publication and getting into index:

The big news about Google Base is that it will help companies, news organizations, publishers, etc,, get content and links into the Google system, quickly. So far, I’ve spotted material from CareerBuilder.com (help wanted ads) The NY Times, (real estate listings), Homescape Network, and volunteer listings from Idealist.

Michael Arrington reviews:

I found a few bugs in this form. For instance, adding “techcrunch” as a tag failed because it was “misspelled” and it simply wouldn’t include it.