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If anyone has missed the announcement, Google Base is an upcoming repository of everything, that supports schemas for objects, user created attributes, bulk uploads and future integration with search. Here are some screenshots [1, 2, 3].

Isn’t this a centralized, google-owned, semantic web anyone? Something that the RDF guys, including Tim Berners-Lee would sweat over and throw shit at. If anybody, Google may have the potential to pull it off, although I’d hate to see that happen. The monopoly would be far beyond Microsoft, it would wipe out Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, everything.

However, that’s not Google’s kinda marketing. They would claim that you own the content, and they are just a bookstore. So just as you can sell something on eBay, you should be able to sell it on Google. Fair enough. But then everything would end up on Google, and that’s scary. Why have multiple bookstores when you can have one with everything in it, and its next door to everyone?

How is a distributed semantic web different? RDF standards describe the data structure in a common fashion, enabling search engines to aggregate this data. Anybody can publish something somewhere, and hope for it being found (or submit URL to google?).

In either case, service and application-centric web is being replaced by a data-centric one, where user’s own the data, so no application boundaries exist. The only functions needed are publish and search. What’s left for businesses to do apart from hosting? Show me the $$$.

The next step? Fine grained permissions for web resources.