After plenty of time for online speculation and buzz to build in the blog world, Google unveiled its new database project as a beta. Google Base went live late last night and will allow users to upload pretty much any information that they want. From recipes to classified listings to white papers, pretty much anything is fair game on Google Base. Google also says that some items from Google Base will be included in the search indexes on Froogle, Google Local and even Google itself.

Google sums it up quite simply on the Google Base site:

If you have information you want to share with others, but aren't sure how to go about gaining an audience, Google Base is for you.

Cnet News has full coverage of the launch:

Google has no immediate plans to serve ads on Google Base, a company spokesman said. Examples given of items people might want to post include party and event planning services, recipes, a used car listing and genome of the 1918 influenza pandemic.

"Students need as much information as possible when they are searching for the right college or university. Google Base helps us reach students and parents and deliver more of the information they need when making important college decisions," said Hal Higginbotham, president of CollegeBoard.com, as quoted on the Google Blog.

While some observers have speculated that Google is targeting the online classifieds market space, specifically eBay and Craigslist, with the service, a Google executive denied that that is the company's intent.