Google co-op is just what i’ve been waiting for.
I swear, sometimes it’s like google is reading my mind. almost every tweek or change i’ve wished for over the last year or so, has eventually come true. To think, just one year prior to that, i was joking with a few friends that Gmail was like some kind of secret cult. At the time, you could only get in by Beta Invite. Oooh. Then, once you tried it, you never went back. What’s more, you found that you couldn’t stop telling other people about it, “converting” them, so to speak.
Today, i use Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheets, Docs, Reader, Notebook, Groups, Trends, Adsense, Analytics, Adwords, Alerts, and now Co-op.
I’ve always liked custom search engines like Wink and Rollyo. But, even though i’ve enjoyed many of the social aspects that these sites had to offer, somehow they all still seemed quite lacking. it always bothered me that Rollyo puts a limit on the number of sites you can add per topic. And Wink has a “Sync with Del.icio.us” tool which would kick ass if i could get it to work (apparently my 3 week old sync task is still queued somewhere in cyber-hell).
Google Co-op seems to satisfy at least part of the concerns that i had (regarding time wasted and revenue sharing) and so i couldn’t resist creating a couple of my own custom search engines for you all to try out and hopefully help build. I haven’t had a chance to style them yet, but there are a ton of excellent sites in each one already so the results for searchs should be pretty interesting.
I’ll be creating a more permanent place for all of these custom search engines as soon as i figure out where – more will likely come soon – so you can keep an eye out for them or just bookmark this page for later reference. the good thing is, wherever i put them, i can always manage them from one place.
in the meantime, go ahead and try one out.
Dont’ forget to let me know what you think. Enjoy!
