Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea breaks down Google’s patent applications for Google Base and makes some conclusions on how they plan to improve their search capabilities going forward. Read it all here:

Google Base allows Google to let users create composition for the search engine in a manner that is easy to index (and search) considering it is structured in attribute/value pairs for different items, and considering it can be labeled even further by the public entering data.

We see Google try to extract data from documents it receives from telecoms, directories, and Web pages for local search, to create a structured database that it can use to supply searchers with info about business locations. It isn’t always easy for Google to construct a database from a mix of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured info.

Google can try to do the same to populate a products database (or other databases), but whether they can get public to upload that knowledge in a structured manner, it may become a lot easier for them to index that knowledge.

Essentially, they are creating a safe means (by their standards) of letting human intelligence and sorting capabilities improve the quality of search results. I highly recommend reading the entire editorial.