Chapter 17. Buying and SellingOnline and Locallywith Google Base

Google Base is a new Google service that's not entirely easy to describe. Some have described it as a site for online classified ads, like the increasingly popular Craigslist. Others have described it as an online marketplace, kind of like eBay without the auctions. Still others view Google Base as a giant database of products and informationand it's this description that's probably the most accurate.

Google describes Google Base as "a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we'll host and make searchable online." That sounds a lot like a big database to me. You can use Google Base to post items that you want to sell; other users can search the Google Base database to find items they want to buy. When a match is made, you and the other user arrange payment and shipping, outside of the Google system. (That's why some say Google Base is a lot like eBay, because eBay is also a "middleman" to individual transactions between users.)