After “Google Base,” a beta testing site, was quickly launched and taken off last month, there are many speculations about Google’s intention to get into online classified advertising business.
Today, Google Base is officially live! This marks another step of Google’s ambition to organize the world’s information on the web. It seems to me that Google has much bigger goals than just venturing into online classified ads area. According to today’s Mercury News, Google intends to source the information on Google Base to its various services. For example, product listings might appear on the Froogle shopping service, while restaurant listings might end up at Google Local.
This is particularly good news for the social venture I am leading – to empower un-served micro-entrepreneurs by providing access to online markets through mobile phones. Google Base can be a perfect partner for us.
I hope Google Base, coupled with “Google Automat” – a patent recently filed by Google that lets people create simple ads with complementary page of full information, will benefit not only the people who have computers and Internet access but also the millions who are left behind by the“digital divide.”
Great Blog
We are in a similar market as Google Base but our product gives structure (while still not imposing any set of predefined categories) to our index and therefore makes it possible for users to not only perform keyword search but also browse hierarchically with the ability to specify unlimited number of filters to refine their search.
Valnur
http://www.valnur.com