Google On Verge Of Launching User-Created Database?

Updated at 11 p.m. eastern: : Depending on which take you read, Google Base, the latest Google page to show up briefly and do a quick disappearing act, is competition for Craigslist, eBay, both or neither. Google watcher John Battelle calls it a “tagged database of stuff.” Whatever it is, my guess is it will require users to spend even more of their time on Google, thus increasing ad revenues from that source as opposed to the partner network. More to come, I’m sure.
From SEW, text of a brief official Google statement that calls it “an early-stage test of a product that enables content owners to easily send their content to Google. … we are working to provide content owners an easy way to give us access to their content.” (No actual announcement, though.) What it doesn’t do is explain the other part of that equation: why would content owners want to do this? The WSJ’s Kevin Delaney suggests (sub. req.) it could be a listing service. It sounds like more than an eBay-a-like or a Google-ized Craigslist wannabe to me, though. Remember Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s caution from during last week’s earnings call: “… if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying so-and-so has ‘a this’ and Google will do the same thing, it’s almost always a wrong answer. We look at markets as they exist and we assume they’re served pretty well by their existing players. We try to see new problems in new markets using the technology that others use and that we build.”
Tom Oliveri, a Google product marketing manager, posted to Google’s official blog: “We think it’s an exciting product, and we’ll let you know when there’s more news.” Google’s statements include Google Base in a list with web crawling and Google Sitemaps as a way to submit content. Thinking about this a little more it sounds like an overt way to make sure information is searchable as opposed to hoping Google’s crawler finds it on a web page. Google becomes the user’s web page.

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