All Your Base Belong to Google
There’s been a lot of speculation and rumor about what Google Base and what it is. Most of the press reports have supposing that Google is setting up a competitor to Craigslist or eBay, creating an online classifieds list of sorts where you can post your stuff you want to sell into some sort of open marketplace. I think the speculation is off the mark though.
Last week I heard from someone familiar with the innards of Google that Google Base, while it could be used as some sort of classified ads, is really something more generic. Focus on the word “Base” as in “database”. In my opinion, the real competitor of Google Base is Intuit’s Quickbase service.
So, what Google Base really (probably) will become is a way to create and share online databases. Such data could be a local soccer team’s contact list, or a collection of recipes of like-minded food afficionados, etc. Of course, one would hope there are some account and security restrictions so you could define who can see or modify your data, allowing you to create affinity groups around your “base”.
Here’s a stretch: Maybe Google Base could be like blogging for data. Imagine RSS feeds for databases, essentially you could provide database replication/synchronization via RSS assuming your DBMS impements RSS synching, but I digress and I haven’t heard anything of the sort coming out of Google.
Even larger, perhaps, is that Google Base could become something like Yahoo Groups (I use it for OCPatterns), without all of the annoying Yahoo full-page ads. Yahoo Groups has a database section for sharing databases with your group members, but the features aren’t as powerfule as Quickbase. Also, Yahoo Groups, which they acquired by buying eGroups, is pretty darn good in terms of running a group and mail distribution list, but I’ve always been bugged by the amount of banner advertising they have there.
I’ve often thought of building a bigger/better form of Yahoo Groups, but either Yahoo would improve it or Google/Microsoft would some day build one. The fact that Google Base right now, in it’s pre-launch state, requires a GMail account login connotes some form of security or membership requirements to use Google Base. We shall some day see…
