Google has launched a new service called Google Base. It allows anyone to upload files for free to its massive server farms, making the data instantly searchable.

Although mainly aimed at online markets for such things as homes and jobs, scientists say the facility could have important implications for data-sharing in science, and perhaps boost efforts to make the web more “intelligent,” bringing structured web pages to the masses and helping boostrap the semantic web, where tags added to pages would allow computers to “understand” what the pages contain.