Garett Rogers, a programmer for a retail-management software company and blogger for ZDnet, has discovered a Google Base version that looks to be the promised replacement for Froogle.

Google had told eBay PowerSellers in September that it would replace Froogle feeds on its Google.com Product Search feature with Google Base listings exclusively (http://digbig.com/4nnnm). But the promised Google Base integration on Google.com has not yet appeared, as Brian Smith of ComparisonEngines.com pointed out last week (http://www.comparisonengines.com/2006/10/26/google-base-or-froogle-google-basesort-of).

Rogers did some digging and found advanced functionality on Google Base that leads him to believe it is the search tool that will sync up with Google.com's Product Search feature and replace Froogle.

Here's a search for "ice cream maker" on base.google.com: http://digbig.com/4nnnj.

Here's the same search using the tool Rogers uncovered: http://digbig.com/4nnnk.

Rogers remains unimpressed so far: "If this is supposed to be used to search for products, I'm confused about the inclusion of things like MySpace pages that don't sell anything."

Froogle is a product search engine geared toward ecommerce listings exclusively, while Google Base is designed to help people find any type of item, whether or not it is for sale. Therefore, Google is challenged with filtering ecommerce listings on Google Base when serving up Product Search results.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=372