I mentioned google base and google trying to enter their own Chili while still being the judge of the chili contest (excuse the metaphor).  The NYT and Gawker are both commenting as well that while brands may be built on PR, the media empires still have some teeth and won’t like seeing their ad revenue dissappear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/business/21carr.html

The scariest development for the newspaper industry was the announcement (on that same Wednesday) that Google, the search engine company that wants to be the wallpaper of the future, was going live with Google Base, a user-generated database in which people can upload any old thing they feel like. Could be a poem about their cat, or their aunt’s recipe for cod fritters with corn relish.

Or, more ominously for the newspaper industry, people could start uploading advertisements to sell their ‘97 Toyota Corolla. Craigslist kicked off the trend, giving readers a free alternative to the local classified section. If Google Base accelerates the process, the journalism-school debates over anonymous sourcing and declining audience may end up seeming quaint.

(Several links added by me.)

I found the link through Gawker.  So, it now qualifies as juicy gossip although not quite as good as Kate Moss.

What it does mean is that google and blogs are literally going to put traditional newspapers out of business.  Not sort of, kind of, maybe, but literally the revenue stream for printed newspapers will be removed, already is being removed, and when that happens they are hosed.  Speaking as someone in Houston where the Chronicle with few exceptions is a reprint of AP Wire Services, I don’t know that I will miss it.

http://www.scripting.com/

… when Google tries to host my content, how much you want to bet they’ll also change what I say by adding links to things they like (for example ads) and removing unnecssary (sic) links (for example, the ones I put there). … Or, perhaps my site won’t be included at all, by some mysterious algorithm (like Google News) not deemed worthy of inclusion.

(link added by me) and http://www.darwinianweb.com/archive/2005/1118.html

Haven’t sites been publishing RSS feeds for years? Yes, but those feeds only included recent items. Google wants ALL of our data.

Google will probably come to their senses, but if ever anyone believed trust wasn’t a big part of branding, google may, or may not, be proving a point in the next year.

This was like the first question one of our web marketing clients asked me about Google base.  Google also posted a very helpful google base faq here.

Bulk uploads

A Bulk upload is a method of uploading multiple items all at once to Google Base. You can submit various types of content – like business locations, movie reviews or other products. Submit content to Google, Froogle and Google Local using Google Base Bulk uploads.

You may upload your content in any of the following formats:

	•	Tab-delimited file
	•	XML file in RSS 2.0 format
	•	XML file in RSS 1.0 format
	•	XML files in ATOM format

Google Base is live and it looks like used car dealers were some of the first people on board.

CNN write up: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/11/16/google.base.ap/index.html?section=cnn_tech

I wrote about this previously.