So I was sitting around this weekend using Gmail, Google+, and Google Drive thinking, "Gee, I wish there was a way I could give Google even more information about me." It turns out, there soon will be. The mad scientists at Mountain View are currently preparing a new service entitled Google Mine that is totally not a private sector arm of PRISM. It allows users to share their belongings with friends in their Google+ circles, letting people see both what others own and what they want. Sounds innocent enough, right?

Key Google Mine Google+ interactions :

  • Catalog your belongings, track what you have
  • Review your belongings for your friends to see
  • Control who sees what, track conversations
  • Send requests to borrow or try out friends' stuff
  • Share stuff you wish for, get recommendations
  • Share stuff you are giving away, find takers
  • Follow, browse, search stuff that friends share
  • Search for stuff people have shared on Mine.
  • See instant matches for your stuff, and the people in your circles.
  • Use What's Hot to follow what others are sharing.
  • Organize and share your stuff as lists.

Similar functionality can already be found in services such as Springpad and Evernote, but they lack the degree of integration with a social network that Google Mine intends to offer. Friends won't have to sign up for a new service to see each other's items, they can just use the Google accounts that they already have.

There's also an Android app in the works. It's currently only available on Bazaar, Google's internal Play Store, but that is expected to change eventually. It will then immediately get 10,000,000+ downloads, because while Android fans can't agree over whether phones should be made of plastic or if TouchWiz truly is awful, we all collectively love giving Google more information than one company should ever have. I mean, who doesn't appreciate a company transparent enough to put their secret intentions directly in the name of a product?

Oh, they meant "mine" as a pronoun, not a verb. Oops.

Edit: It should be noted that this is still an internal project, and these things don't always see the light of day. If Google Mine never comes to fruition, don't be too disappointed.

Source: Google Operating System