Google Sites Finally Launches
February 27th, 2008 (9:01pm) Judi Sohn 37 CommentsTweet This
We know that wikis can be incredibly useful. But for some reason we’re still trying to figure out, collaborating groups haven’t jumped on the bandwagon. It’s no surprise that Google wanted to be a player in this space with their acquisition of Jotspot in 2006. We’ve been patiently waiting to see how Google would finally make wikis relevant and approachable to the every day user.
The guessing is over with today’s long-awaited launch of Google Sites.
The application is the first Google service deployed exclusively for Google Apps, free in Team, Standard, Education and Premier editions. If your organization is not already using Google Apps, you’ll need to at least sign up for Google Team edition to use Sites.
Anyone who has ever created or edited a Google Doc will feel right at home in Google Sites.
To get started, Google provides some basic templates and themes, with very easy page creation and linking.
Users do not need to know any markup language to edit pages, one of the biggest drawbacks of most wiki applications. Google Sites borrows the familiar WYSIWYG toolbar from Google Docs.
Using the “Insert” menu, you can embed elements from other Google properties such as calendar, Picasa albums, documents, YouTube videos and more.
Similar to Google Docs, you can opt to share your Google Sites within your company, with the world or not at all. The entire application environment is clean and straightforward, and not at all intimidating to those who have never edited a site before.
Google Sites is a simple way for groups to build their intranet or publish uncomplicated pages. The appeal of Google Sites is in how easy it is for groups who are already using Google Apps to adopt it into their workflow without learning any HTML or special wiki language. The barrier of users having to store yet another login and learn their way around yet another site is essentially eliminated. While some will inevitably complain that the service doesn’t have this or that feature, Google Site’s tight integration with Google’s other products is an extremely smart way to get existing users on board quickly.
Storage size varies across different editions of Google Apps. Domains of Google Apps Standard and Team editions receive 10GB of Google Sites storage. Premier Edition and Education Edition domains receive a minimum of 10GB, plus an additional 500MB for each user account in the domain.
It appears that new Google Apps domains can start using Google Sites right away, while existing customers will automatically see the new service in their accounts in a few weeks. While Google’s press pages said Sites would be available to existing domains in a few weeks, in fact it’s available now. Current Google App administrators can find Google Sites simply by clicking the “Add More Services” link on their administrator dashboard.
What do you think of Google Sites? Was it worth the wait?
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
How is this better than google page creator?
As an investor and executive at PBwiki, I’m horrendously biased, but I happen to think that this is pretty cool news, both for on-demand wikis and collaboration in general, and PBwiki in particular.
While the JotSpot acquisition got a lot of folks excited about the wiki space, things died down as the service went into silent running within Google. No longer. Google’s launch of Google Sites puts wikis right at the heart of what’s shaping up to be one of the big battles of 2008: Collaboration.
Under the Web 2.0 radar, Microsoft has been trying to lock up the collaboration market with SharePoint, a software product that is broadly installed but little loved.
Now Google Sites will bring the might of Google to bear on the SaaS side of the on-premise/on-demand debate.
It’s good to have Google on your side in a fight.
It’s also good to have Google validating your space–just look at how well folks like Omniture and WordPress has down. Google Analytics and Blogger have opened up the market for more advanced and polished products.
Don’t forget, PBwiki is the world’s largest provider of on-demand wikis to businesses and educators (almost 450,000 wikis hosted). PBwiki is in use at over 1/3 of the Fortune 500, and its paying customers include Facebook, Symantec, DePaul University, and the FDA (among thousands of others).
Google Sites is completely underwhelming. Webware calls it the relaunch of Jot. The features offered with Sites makes me wonder why they needed to acquire Jot in the first place.
By the way, let me know when you want a beta invite for PBwiki 2.0, which really takes on-demand wikis to the next level in terms of functionality and polish.
Your survey left out one important option. I won’t be using Google Sites because I’m not signed up for Google teams and likely won’t be.
I’m currently a heavy user of Google apps, but as an individual. I’ve been waiting for this rollout for a year, it finally comes and I can’t use it. Crap.
I hope this is just a partial rollout and that Google plans to offer a version that is open for non-Team users.
@Chris, the point of Google Sites isn’t to blow people away with the features. It’s about being incredibly easy to adopt for what it is.
@Mike, like I said, this is the first application that Google is rolling out for Google Apps for Domains first. Exclusively, in fact. It will be interesting to see whether or not this turns out to be a smart strategy.
Just as Chris, I am biased too. Huddle.net is in the same space and I agree – any announcement that highlights the issue of social collaboration is good news. Although it’s quite sad that Google took all good stuff away from JotSpot. I am sure it’s still useful but only for Google Apps power users.
I went to check it out this morning, based in part on this review. Very excited to do so.
Completely unimpressed. Maybe I missed something, but seems like it would take a lot of work and planning to build a collaboration site that was worth anything at all.
Another box on your survey could have been: I don’t plan to use it because I tried it and it doesn’t seem to solve any problems I have…
Maybe I’ll go back and look again, but I was so unimpressed. (By the way, has Google ever hired a decent user interface designer? You’d think there’d be room for that in a multi-billion firm…)
~Jim
Jim, I agree. I don’t think “impressive” was a word I used to describe this. Simple? Yes. Easy? Yes.
What impressed me was the lesson that Google apparently learned from Microsoft…if you make it as effortless to engage as email, they will come.
This is the only wiki product I can see my everyday colleagues using…not because of this feature, or that feature. But because it’s simply one click away (since we use Google Apps for our email) and there’s absolutely no learning curve.
After being a paid subscriber to PBWiki for one year, i moved out because you guys could not support page level or directory level access control. Its either a person had access to the whole site or nothing. I here its in beta…but this is one of those must have functions…my 2 cents – Jay
I might have given a shot to Google Sites for the final planning of my Just Over 50 and Not Dead Yet panel at South by Southwest on March 8 if it had launched earlier.
After thinking of using the new and improved Backpack, I settled for PBWiki which I had dealt with on occasion and found user friendly.
Our ‘Just Over 50 and Not Dead Yet’ panel will cover the fact that the online world is not populated only by 20 somethings.
It takes place on Saturday, March 8 at 11:30 am.
Hope to see some of you there.
Serge the Concierge
It’d be really cool if Google Sites becomes available on mobile, via Apple iPhone, Nokia dual-modes or the upcoming Android handsets.
With the possibility to embed rich content, a Google Sites for mobile could become really big.
I’d love to see someone do an honest comparison between Google Sites and 37signals new Multiuser Backpack. They seem to address similar solutions (simple and quick intranets). Google went the anything goes unstructured wiki route and 37s went the structured tool/page route (todos, notes, files, pictures, etc.)
On the Google Apps page, Google Sites is listed as being available in the Free edition
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions_spe.html
@JLT I can’t do a comparison between Google Sites and Backpack, because I’ve never used Google Sites, but I can say that I’m using (and loving) Backpack because it’s clean, fast, and easy. I’m pretty happy, and even with the plethora of online collaboration tools available right now, I can’t see myself using anything else (and I have no bias to disclose).
This is what I have been waiting for, Google Start is okay but does not limit what your users always see.
I think top blogs are generating enough Info which makes requirement of any WiKi’s redundant.
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
I have been using Google application and loving it.
Syed
http://sirehdancengkeh.com
How is this different from google pages?
pages.google.com
Elijah, Google Sites is more about collaboration on pages, while Pages is just about publishing, well, pages.
We’ve been using a wiki as our internal intranet– I have a team of programmers, artists, and managers building 3d environments– and while most of the techies were comfortable in the wiki environment, the team as a whole was not. We switched to Google Sites (a pretty quick port over, our wiki wasn’t huge) on launch, and it’s been like night and day for our non-technical users, possibly because we’re heavy google apps users already.
When is google going to integrate project management and CRM into apps, then they can own all of my data. I welcome our Google overlords!
I’m waiting for Google to add task management/delegation to the suite.
This is definitely worth a try heh..
nhick
http://www.itrush.com
Another great google product !