Since my last Google Subdomains post was so well received, I decided to run the script again to see if Google have added any more subdomains recently. As it happens, they have:

• base.google.com

I'm not sure when this was added, but it only seems to return a 403 Forbidden status at the moment.

No doubt, this discovery will make people speculate over what new service Google could have in store for us this time. It seems like Google might have forgotten all about Google Calendar, so what could Google Base possibly be? Here are a couple of ideas:

• Web Hosting or Domain Registration Service (where base could mean online home)
• Online Database Application (where base could simply mean database)
• User Profile Database of Google Talk users (like the member directories MSN and Yahoo have)
• Online Community Pages (like MSN Spaces or MySpace where base could mean online home... again)

Anyway, so that's it. I'm all out of ideas, but there are plenty other meanings of the word “base” on Answers.com and Wikipedia, so I'll let you figure out what it's going to be used for!

Update: 24 October 2005 (22:40)
A post by shimsand over at SearchEngineWatch gives some information about what we can expect...

“Google Base is Google's latest project in an effort to organize the world's information. It isn't in Beta or Alpha yet. They are still developing it. I wasn't able to get much information from my sources at Google, but I'll tell you what they told me. Basically, Google Base will present feed results on the results page. The feeds will probably be anywhere from 1-3 results, and either presented above or below the horizontal sponsored ads.”

Update: 25 October 2005 (09:15)
And Google Base is now live... kind of. It doesn't seem possible to login just yet, but the page is now showing this:

“Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free.

Examples of items you can find in Google Base:

• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures

You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local.”

The FAQs should be online soon too, but the page is currently just displaying, “Oops... We didn't understand that. Your [sic] have tried to access a non-existent page.”

So, all you sceptics who thought I was way off thinking it could be an Online Database Application can eat your words! (BTW, credit must go to Wouter Schut in the Google Blogoscoped Forum for the idea to scan their subdomains again - and for the suggestion of it being something database related!)

Update: 26 October 2005 (13:10)
The Official Google Blog is being a bit vague but more details and screenshots are now available all over the Internet.

If you're after some more information, I'd recommend reading the following posts on Philipp Lenssen's Google Blogoscoped:

• Google Base Was Sort of Live
• More Google Base Screenshots

(BTW, I think that getting mentioned by The Guardian and The New York Times is pretty cool...)

Update: 26 October 2005 (21:30)
Well, Google Base appears to be almost live... yet again! I'm still not able to sign in to the service, but I've noticed that it now appears on my Google Accounts menu. Screenshots as follows:

• Google Accounts: Account Summary
  https://www.google.com/accounts/
• Google Accounts: Edit Google Base
  https://www.google.com/accounts/EditUserServiceData?service=gbase

Update: 27 October 2005 (13:50)
So, Google Base is up and down like a yo-yo. Oh well. On a kind of related note, I noticed that when I signed out of Google Accounts, the sign out screen showed “Purchases” in the list of services that I was logged out of:

• Google Accounts: Sign Out
  http://www.google.com/accounts/Logout

Note: this only seems to appear when you sign out immediately after trying to login to Google Purchases.

Update: 16 November 2005 (09:00)
Finally! According to the Official Google Blog, Google Base is now officially live! (It's only in beta, of course, but it's live...)

Labels: google

Following the recent hype about a possible Google Calendar that might be appearing soon at calendar.google.com, I wrote a quick script to see what other Google subdomains exist that use everyday words in the hope that I'd be the first to discover some new Google service that's about to appear anytime now.

Using a popular word list as the basis for 61,406 common (and not-so-common) words (the same one used by Waxy's Dictionary Domain List), I ran the script last weekend and found some interesting - and plenty of uninteresting - subdomains.

After Googling a few of them, it would seem that I'm not the only one to have this idea either. Oh well. However, I did find a few that I couldn't find being discussed or listed anywhere else though:

• actualities.google.com - alias for news.google.com
• d.google.com - same as www.google.com
• email.google.com - redirects to mail.google.com (obviously)
• fusion.google.com - redirects to www.google.com
• locale.google.com - redirects to local.google.com
• purchase.google.com - same as www.google.com
• relay.google.com - nothing (possibly a mail relay server?)
• sandbox.google.com - redirects to www.google.com/webhp?gsessionid= followed by a seemingly random code...

Anyway, if you're interested in the full list of subdomains I found using the script - and I know there are others - it's available here.

Update: 24 October 2005
I've just found another Google subdomain.

Update: 11 June 2006 (11:33)
Updated the link to the list of Google Subdomains as it's now been moved to a more permanent home where I shall continue to update it as I find new subdomains.

Labels: google