Still not convinced Google is Evil?
From Jeremie, a proof that Google at the end of the day is just another evil company?
I am absolutely flummoxed that Google, the company who's entire foundation and success is built on other's content, would do something so contrary as to become a walled garden. Seriously, the insolence of this act simply astonishes me, and I hope others. This is the company that owns the phrase "Don't Be Evil" and has the trust of the masses.
Now with Base they boldly make the statement "Help the world find your content." It sounds wonderful, another web hosting service and who can do it better than Google, right? Wrong, when any web tool other than a browser (such as another search engine) tries to access the content hosted on Google Base, they encounter this bit of protocol will disallow all use of the content to anyone other than Google:
http://base.google.com/robots.txt:
User-agent: *
...
Disallow: /base
Your content that you've entrusted to them to "host and make searchable online" is sitting squarely inside of Google Fort, armed with locked doors for their competition by blocking the very thing that made them a success, the open web.