I think this is a good thing for the world of webmasters. It can create an entry point for people to learn about the web and then they'll want more and more. That's when they'll turn to professionals.

And, when your brother-in-law wants a web site, say, sure Fred, smart guy like you can do it yourself. Here's how.
Now, that's a REALLY great thing for the world of webmasters.

But, for the world of the web overall--blah. More people trying to do LOLcats.

Here's Google's entryway:
[sites.google.com...]

Heh, does it come with a guaranteed first page ranking?

(yawn)... nothing ground breaking here. Why should someone use this instead of a blogger network?

And, why do this when they own Blogger?

Mack.

And, why do this when they own Blogger?

Different purpose. Different market.

Ya, it's just a bad description. It's a team-share we app, not really a wysiwyg website publisher.

Google Sites is hosted on Google computers and is free to users of Google Apps, which the company offers at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft tools.

So it is free if you have purchased Google Apps?

>>And, why do this when they own Blogger?

You probably haven't taken SharePoint out for a ride. ;)

Many say Google is all about ad revenue and these worthless apps they keep releasing. To me, the apps are tiny poison-tipped darts: if enough of them find their mark, they could prove lethal to the largest of prey.

I just bought a good domain and actually it is suppose to be were you can build web pages and all that but right now it is broke.

Kinda did it as a test as well as you get a godaddy account and I might just move my domains as I keep reading hosing and registered domains are not a good thing to be together...

Keep my host move my register.

I guess it is more against sites like basecamphq - google is becoming more and more a competitor for some mid-size internet companies i think they should rather buy than try to outrun.

apps are tiny poison-tipped darts: if enough of them find their mark

The darts picture is nice, but if you can not come up with a major shot into the head of the rhino currently running at you to kill, you might just find your self torn apart and the rhino will get poisoned 20 minutes later...

P!

If you click on the Google sites logo at sites.google.com, it 404's to sites.google.com/sites/ and then your stuck there.
Ironic ain't it?

Soon most domain registrars will offer Google aps and the Internet is becoming more or less like Google youtube World.

Microsoft should watch out. I am certain, that Google is already examining to develop the G PC without Vista .... :-)

Well after farting around with this for a good part of the day I am to the point of ok.

Just a private place you can invite people to add to the site or another little play ground were it will happen for a while but play out.

I opened mine up to the public but still takes me to the log in page when I try to bring it up. Give the dns a whole to work then see.

Added a page off my site code and all Google took out all the java script and just allowed the html code.

Looks fine if i can figure out how I can get the public to it

I'm fairly impressed with this, very very easy to setup. I've had some experience with Sharepoint Services 3.0 and some frustrations as well. Google has done a great job in making this so simple to use and still providing some (not all) of the things that make Sharepoint so useful.

It won't take the place of Sharepoint for most companies, but small companies, like my uber small one will use it. No hardware to worry about, sweet.

The Jot wikis had so much more functionality. It's sad to see them stripped down to this. I hope they will add some of the more professional level modules back into this.

bwnbwn:

Looks like the sites cannot be shared with the public at large as you can only invite members of your domain as in name@yourdomain.com

So its internal only if I'm not mistaken, can anyone else shed some light?

Okay, I was wrong, you can share sites outside your domain.

You can set the trust/share level for the users in your domain. Mine was set to NOT allow users to share sites outside of my domain. I set it to Allow (with a warning) and its working fine. Sorry for the confusion, its getting late I guess..

So is this Google's social networking service, to compete with the likes of facebook?
Or is it where you can make a brochure website for your company?

To me, the apps are tiny poison-tipped darts: if enough of them find their mark, they could prove lethal to the largest of prey

Spot on ! The prey of course is Microsoft.

I was actually looking forward to this. But the version Google has released looks quite limited.

I wonder how well these websites comply with G's very own webmaster guidelines?

Will people be able to create "serious sites" for commercial use on this app? I'm guessing it will predominantly be a wysiwyg interface which might leave quite messy code.

IMHO I don't think this is a huge threat to the small developers out there who cater for the serious SME.

It's a nice product to compliment a users G-Blog and it will be interesting to see how G checkout plugs into this and whether G provides free, totally hosted e-comms solutions in the near future.

Just some thoughts - R