Google makes data free for all

摘要

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'. As well as letting people upload data, Google Base lets users describe the data with simple tags that others can then use in searches. It also allows users to structure the data by adding fields on the fly. So a web page holding a scientific article might have fields for 'author', 'journal', 'publication date' and other bibliometric information.