Google gets a ping service, ‘full’ blogging search around the corner?

Google has announced it’s opened a ping server for bloggers to, er, ping when they post.

Bloggers wanting to ping Google should use the following link:

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

(which was kindly placed 3 clicks away form the announcement on the blog, urg!)

A quick scan through the ping documentation suggests that Google haven’t done ‘a Google’ and reinvented a standard by releasing yet-another-XML/RPC-format!

http://blogsearch.google.com/, Google’s blog search, has kinda been in Beta for some time. It’s not linked from the front page of the site, and one can only speculate that they’ve been updating their database ad hoc (up until this release of a ping server).

Could the announcement of a ping server represent the early ramping up of Google’s service in this area?