google base – another piece in the grid
since a couple of days google base spreads through the blogosphere, but until now i have seen nothing more than a server error at base.google.com.
like the new google blog writes:
“google base is a service to insert and share all types of content: events, housing, jobs, products, second-hand vehicles, … (view screenshot). the information will be included in the main google search index and other google products like froogle and google local […] we expect that ‘google purchases‘ – the new micropayments service among users – will be also introduced as a complement to google base.”
is this the start of a “deathmatch” against ebay and other services by google asks robert basic or is it more another piece in the google grid, where google combines all his services to a giant grid, knowing everything about you … a further step towards epic.
last year i spoke with an american amazon manager and he was proudly talking about how many data and buying patterns they are collecting about their customers each day. they are hosting terabytes and terabytes of data about you in their data-warehouses using it for their recommendation systems and services.
if google combines all his services and collected data to one google grid, i think you don’t want to know, want they then know about you – take a look at google’s services or labs and check out how many services you are already using – google search, gmail, froogle, maps?
i like the google services and i don’t want to be too pessimistic, but we should be aware of the risks of this megacompanies and stored data about us.
read more about google base at the super geek blog here and here.
(via basic thinking and an older post an epic)
addition (October 27. 2005, 23:41): just found tony ruscoe’s blog where he is checking google subdomains for possible new services via kalyxo, who knows something more about ‘google purchases‘.
update (December 8. 2006, 10:53): the epic movie shows a potential future history of the media by robin sloan and matt thompson, with music by aaron mcleran – the links: the older epic 2014 version, a more recent updated version called epic 2015 and epic 2015 in german.
[tags: amazon, ebay, epic, google, google base, google grid, autocrat google]