If you add in every small business in the world – and believe me, Google is thinking that way – you can sum up Google’s ambitions in the commercial world as this: the company would like to provide a platform that mediates supply and demand for pretty much the entire world economy.

John Battelle in his new book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

And from Battelle’s blog last week a post about base.google.com…

Word is ripping around the web that Google is testing a new subdomain called base.google.com. A screen shot – the site has been up and down – shows a Google database of sorts where you can “Post your items on Google.” It’s a tagged database of stuff that heads directly into the world of Paul Ford’s classic “Google Takes All” essay.

It’s weird. Even though lots of the time Google’s search doesn’t bring back what I want, and even though they’re starting to take over the world, my overall experience of Google is positive. I don’t feel the same sense of “can I trust them?” I feel when I’m using (or thinking of using) products and services supplied by other global brands.