Google Base Live

[vitaplease]

[base.google.com...]

[nytimes.com...]

During an interview at Google headquarters last week, Salar Kamangar, Google's vice president for product management, said the new service was experimental and cautioned against viewing it as a imminent assault on the classified advertising business because it could be used in far broader ways.

Still, several industry executives and analysts said they believed that Google Base was an aggressive first step in a series of maneuvers that would position the company as a powerful player in the $100 billion annual market for classified advertising

seems like items have been uploaded since oct 28?

hell of a job to keep this clean..

[bill]

I've been messing around with it in Japan for a few hours. The login was a bit of a chore. I found logging out of any Google accounts and then logging in anew was the key to getting in.

I'm still trying to figure out just how I'd get any benefit out of this. I guess it will be better to wait until there is some more user contributed data. Right now it just looks like another place to drop my RSS feed.

[kartiksh]

i tried adding few things but after selecting or adding subject on first step i am getting below errors

For input string: "-5.5"
Error 500

[zCat]

Me too. It says "Cannot save item - you have exceeded the maximum of 200 items." even though I only try to add a couple.

Could it be Google is overstretching themselves? The quality of their new services seems to be going downhill. This is more "alpha" than "beta".

[kartiksh]

I believe its not even alpha i.e. without proper test launch.

[zCat]

Ah, once I created an account it works. Now all I have to do is work out what this is actually for. Evidently Google is diversifying into Beanie Baby sales (try searching for "Chocolate the Moose").

Now, here's an interesting question: prices can only be input in "$". Is that US dollars, or Alpha Centaurian Galactic Empire dollars, or what?

[edited by: zCat at 7:36 am (utc) on Nov. 16, 2005]

[xalex]

I visited the google base to see ebay like auction site or like craiglist.

I was dissapointed. What a let down? Its gonna flop like froogle if the navigation doesn't change.

And its too confusing.

Whats with google? They are just getting worse in everything or is our expectation just too high?

This year web award definitely goes to Yahoo....

[zCat]

What about copyright violations? I've just come across some recipies, which while available under various open-source (or open sauce, haha) licences such as the GFDL, have been reproduced with only partial attribution (source URL) and not in accordance with the licencing conditions.

[Katie_Venra]

while available under various open-source (or open sauce, haha)

LOL! Nice pun :)

Anyway, i had a look around and to be honest i just dont get it. Google in my eyes are opening too many things too fast, they are supposed to be a Search Engine why don't they fix the problems with the search engine itself first before launching another half baked idea which will be used for a while and forgotten about?

[Freedom]

, they may also be included in the main Google search index

That's great. That's all the internet needs alongside scrapers and adsense spam sites, 2 billion more pages of #*$!.

Vertical search engines are going to take off in 2006 for a reason.

Google was trying to buy a classified ad publisher (print and internet medium) in August which owns 400 publications and 56 websites.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[ronin]

Katie_Venra>

they are supposed to be a Search Engine

Time to stop banging your head against a brick wall. Google may have started out as a search engine but it is not a search engine now. And it's not listening to those who appeal to it to be.

[isorg]

If you don't have your own website, we'll host your content for you

Forget the sandbox. Just host your entire website on Base, and it will get into the Google index immediately.

[pontifex]

was someone able to publish information with a picture? as soon as I add a pic, it is hanging in an endless loop!

P!

[henry0]

I loged in using my gmail account
and published my ad
no problems..so far!

[Ouroboros]

All your base are belong to Google.

[billygg]

so someone please tell me what the purpose of base is. I mean, yea, you submit your products to it. isnt that what froogle is, lol. I just dont quite understand what the reasoning is to this, maybe i am a moron.

[walkman]

not doing well on google.com? add every page on base.google.com. Lotsa spam I see

[bostonBeans]

cautioned against viewing it as a imminent assault on the classified advertising business because it could be used in far broader ways

This is clearly an attack on the classified advertising business. Just because it can be used in 'broader ways' does not change this. That just makes it attack on more industries as well!

In the end, competition is always good for the consumer/user, so I am excited about this.

That said, the Google Base offering has a long way to go before is really is a threat to the classifieds - right now it is just too damn confusing. Adding listings is confusing, the search results are confusing, what the product is supposed to be is confusing...

-bB

[Giacomo]

From the Google Base help page [base.google.com]:

12. Can I advertise with AdWords?

Yes, you can advertise your Google Base hosted page using AdWords. We recommend that you use your namespace in the visible URL of your ad so that users are aware that you have a unique page on Google Base. For example, you could use base.google.com/denise or base.google.com/john.

Namespace? What exactly is that?
Does that mean I can have my own Google-based home page with an URL like base.google.com/giacomo or base.google.com/your-keyord-here?

[Freedom]

Does anyone else agree that this is competition for Craigslist?

[badass101]

All seems a bit confused to me - not like the nice 'friendly' Google Search. I wonder what searchers will make of it?

[s_w_g]

I don't get how this whole "And you can use it to publish things like recipes" bit is meant to work. I mean, maybe if you used the description bit to describe the recipe, yeah, and then the URL to link to the recipe bit - but it doesn't sound like that's what they meant.

[weeks]

Yeah, this is Craigslist, which evolved slowly and adapted.

I'm with everyone else here--this is weird. I don't think it will work. This is not 1999.

[blaze]

So .. anyone getting traffic from their gbase listing yet?

[Bidera]

This is a direct jab at Craigslist, but also an indirect attack on eBay, no matter how much Google denies it.

For a smaller auction site such as my Bidera, it will be an interesting (read cursed) time.

Since Google Base takes RSS 2.0 (which Bidera has been providing for a long time) it is extremely tempting to just dump all our listings in there, and it seems Google is actually not against the idea.

Wouldn't it be funny if eBay decided to add their auctions to GBase..

I am scared of what will happen when bots start generating content to submit it to GBase, the amount of trash they will get will be enormous.

[edited by: vitaplease at 3:11 pm (utc) on Nov. 16, 2005]
[edit reason] no sigs please [/edit]

[hdpt00]

I don't get it and neither do a lot of other people. I was expecting something like ebay or craiglist, with well defined categories, etc. Instead I have to search, which isn't big enough on the page anyhow.

People here 100X the avergae on the internet savvy scale, I couldn't even imagine my mom or dad ever using this anytime soon.

What a poor attempt as something not innovative. Fix your random banning and 302s.

Feel free to respond to my email as well, been banned for 4 months now, no reason. Thanks google, you win again!

[StreetSurfer]

I think it's pretty cool

It has huge applications - and yes - not just classifieds... it is sort of a mini web page publisher... producing more searchable content - and blurs many lines and overflows into many market areas...

I really think the idea of the application actively learning from the user is huge in itself - and while simple implimentation of field popularity = add field to selection is a start - it brings forward that very important idea...

[GrendelKhan TSU]

All your base are belong to Google.

LMAO! classic.

I agree that ppl gotta LEEETTT GGGOOOO. Google INC is far from a just a search engine. the google homepage is a primarily a search engine...but not the company iteself. And hasn't been for a while.

you guys also said this right...ppl around here are 1000X more savvy than the average netizen...meaning also everyone is 1000X more critical of things anything that comes out.

This has promise and big implications.... they obviously are just working it out and heck...probably just using what the early adopter critics around here have to help fix it quicker. ;)

so flame away! you're only helpin em. ;)

[Drumat5280]

I like the little rotating "clock" they have on the right side when you are uploading photos.

Does anyone know how that is done?

[walkman]

>> ppl around here are 1000X more savvy than the average netizen...meaning also everyone is 1000X more critical of things anything that comes out.

great point. Plus, this is just a few steps before alpha, and it will be tidied up. One problem I foresee, is copyright violations, as people will post other's work there. As far as spam, Google is pretty good at tracking, and will easily ban people who do that more than a few times.