Sorry for the lack of insight here guys - I spent an hour playing with Co-op, then seemingly lost the will to live. Google Trends is much more convincing.
Josh
· 3 years ago
I played with this for awhile this afternoon. I gave up after about 30 minutes. I think you're right about this one--it won't appeal to the average user. It thoroughly fails the KISS test.
Ted
· 3 years ago
One thing that bothers me at times about Google is how this massive corporation sometimes appears to act like an opensource, nonprofit project.
Froogle, Base, Co-op, and others all seem to depend on other people doing most of the work, and then Google ultimately owns the data.
Decipho
· 3 years ago
I agree with Ted, they should think about some sort of rev share with the end user with some of their projects since they do the work.
Adam
· 3 years ago
While I partly agree, I think co-op is a pretty cool service. It's pretty simple: browse the directory and subscribe to topics that interest you then next time you're performing a Google Search, you're presented with results from not only the web but from the subscribed services. The health one is particularly useful. Am I the only one that can see the value of this? Bird flu is a good health search...
David G
· 3 years ago
If I know which info-provider I should subscribe to, then why am I searching in the first place? How did google think this was a good idea? The only way this service will benefit anyone is if they remove the subscription requirment - and have the content providers pay to play on a cpc basis - which is where I think this service will end up - so, just more advertising in the prime search real estate.
Ted - you just don't get it - google search is "open source"; none of the content you see when you run a search was produced by google, yet it's one of the world's most profitable businesses - you need to reverse your view of user-generated-products and become weary of any business online that doesn't have an open source component - community IS the internet value proposition.
Jeremy Stein
· 3 years ago
where have i seen this before?
Ted
· 3 years ago
David: google search could not be more different in that it does all the work and then serves us the results. Base, Co-op and Froogle ask us (developers or users) to add the information. And what do we get out of it? Community only works if it's self-reinforcing and I don't see that in these efforts.
Adam
· 3 years ago
"And what do we get out of it?"
Huge amounts of traffic to your website?
Lindsay Donaghe
· 3 years ago
I have been playing with Google Co-op too and I see potential but it's raw and there are definitely usability issues.
I didn't understand what the "subscription" aspect was for subscribed links until I got all the way through creating a test subscribed link and realized that I was the only one who could see it (since no one had subscribed to me besides me!). I guess that answered my question of how subscribed links were different from free AdSense!
The topics could be pretty powerful if you're willing to invest the time and effort in creating those annotation XML files by hand. I can envision porting the data from any bookmarking service that lets you use tags into the annotations and contexts. Tags could translate into the contexts and your bookmark comments as the annotations. Someone (mabye me?) will whip up a tool to handle this soon.
I won't be suprised at all if when Google Notebook comes out next week it will hook into Co-op for you. As you collect links you'll proably have an option to put your new annotation in as well. We'll have to wait and see but that's my guess as to why there's a lack of tools with the Co-op offering...
The real issue I think is how do you find people to subscribe to? I couldn't find a list if there is one. But even if there is, finding subscription providers needs to be more automated. If I'm searching for something I don't want to go search for potential subscription providers first, subscribe to them, and then go perform my search... It seems as if you're searching on the terms a subscription provider placed in their subscribed links you should see an indicator giving you the option to subscribe to them if you're not already... Otherwise how will the relevant information ever reach the people who are looking for it?
Adam
· 3 years ago
I think we will soon see a public directory of submitted subscriptions.
All Comments
Froogle, Base, Co-op, and others all seem to depend on other people doing most of the work, and then Google ultimately owns the data.
Ted - you just don't get it - google search is "open source"; none of the content you see when you run a search was produced by google, yet it's one of the world's most profitable businesses - you need to reverse your view of user-generated-products and become weary of any business online that doesn't have an open source component - community IS the internet value proposition.
Huge amounts of traffic to your website?
I didn't understand what the "subscription" aspect was for subscribed links until I got all the way through creating a test subscribed link and realized that I was the only one who could see it (since no one had subscribed to me besides me!). I guess that answered my question of how subscribed links were different from free AdSense!
The topics could be pretty powerful if you're willing to invest the time and effort in creating those annotation XML files by hand. I can envision porting the data from any bookmarking service that lets you use tags into the annotations and contexts. Tags could translate into the contexts and your bookmark comments as the annotations. Someone (mabye me?) will whip up a tool to handle this soon.
I won't be suprised at all if when Google Notebook comes out next week it will hook into Co-op for you. As you collect links you'll proably have an option to put your new annotation in as well. We'll have to wait and see but that's my guess as to why there's a lack of tools with the Co-op offering...
The real issue I think is how do you find people to subscribe to? I couldn't find a list if there is one. But even if there is, finding subscription providers needs to be more automated. If I'm searching for something I don't want to go search for potential subscription providers first, subscribe to them, and then go perform my search... It seems as if you're searching on the terms a subscription provider placed in their subscribed links you should see an indicator giving you the option to subscribe to them if you're not already... Otherwise how will the relevant information ever reach the people who are looking for it?