When do we get a database.google.com where we can build our own applications on top of bigtable/gfs...

That would indeed be cool... a sort of Google Full Power API.

Yeah? Well... it's not quite database.google.com – but a new subdomain has popped up:

http://base.google.com

I just ran my "Google Subdomain Sniffer" again and it found that today!

More here:
http://ruscoe.net/blog/2005/10/all-your-base-are-belong-to-google.asp

perhaps the highest number of users of any site
+
a free place to keep everything you want to share or get attention for
+
puchase/accounts system for micro payment
=
a killer strategy, God knows what is comming later, somewhere in... net (www.somewherein.net/blog)

This thread continues here, now that Google Base was live:
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/11876.html