Google to Compete With Ebay?

Google announced on Tuesday that they are testing a new service called Google Base that would allow people to post and make searchable any type of content. Items that can be posted to Google’s server include "description of your party planning service," "articles on current events from your Web site," "listing of your used car for sale," and "database of protein structures." "This is an early stage test of a product that enables content owners to easily send their content to Google," said a Google spokeswoman. "Like our Web crawl and the recently released Google Sitemaps program, we are working to provide content owners an easy way to give us access to their content. We’re continually exploring new opportunities to expand our offerings, but we don’t have anything to announce at this time."

It sounds to me like this is much more than the future Ebay competitor. I’m not sure what it is, exactly. We bring the content to them? Maybe I need to re-read that article about the Google File System. But perhaps it is more like the clever commenter said over on the flickr page with the Google Base screenshot: "All your base are belong to us."

There are more screenshots of Google Base on seweso’s blog, a guy who happened to call this one a while ago. Good prediction! And Google Blogoscoped has even more info gathered from screenshots too.