Google launched a new service last week, Google Base. It allows anyone to upload files for free to its massive server farms, making the data instantly searchable. Although mainly aimed at online markets for such things as homes and jobs, scientists say the facility could have important implications for data-sharing in science, and perhaps boost efforts to make the web more 'intelligent'.
...advocates say that this allows web content to be structured as databases on a large scale. For a start, that makes it simple for any scientist to share data, and store it in ways that allow computers to search and retrieve it.
From Nature,438, 400-401 (24 November 2005) Read more.
Posted by Katie Newman at December 5, 2005 9:29 AM