Perhaps this is a sign that Google Base is close to becoming a reality? Here is a link to Google Base's Help Center. Lots of information here. Shares a lot in common with the Help Center for Froogle Merchants. Upon visiting some answers, then hitting refresh repeatedly, a 404 error such as "The requested URL /support/bin/answer.py?answer=25290&topic=2904 was not found on this server." is given. Perhaps this is simply because it is not ready yet? Or, perhaps it is actually being replicated throughout their massive server farm as I type this. Close? Let's hope. In the meantime, at least there are positive signs of real progress here.

*** UPDATE: Looks like I was discovering Google Base while it was being pushed live. Just moments ago, I stumbled onto the fact that the Google Base website is now live. http://base.google.com.

It may be worth mentioning (or not) that there is a new entry to Google's robots.txt file.

/chart?

Although this may have something to do with the release of Google Analytics (for free,) so far there is nothing that resolves to "/chart". In other words, even if this is going to be nothing more than something tied to Google Analytics, this seems to be something new in the works and likely to be released soon.