What does Google Sites mean to us?

Google sites, launched Feb 28th as part of Google apps, is a cool application that will help any one create a site that can be used to share documents, videos, picture etc. The owner or admin of the site can also give his/her group permission to edit and post. This concept of information sharing has been picked from Jotspot., which Google acquired in late 2006. Jotspot was a wiki based company that allowed for a long list of application to be integrated together.

I definitely see Sites picking up some traction with such groups as high school and college students and very small businesses.

I know many colleges today use Blackboard to facilitate information sharing between professors and students. This is used to post class notes, share presentations, exchange e-mails with individuals or groups etc.. I think Sites application now gives students and teachers alike a new opportunity to create something more personalized and customized for their class or group. For example: creating a customized site for summer sessions or special projects. Students can also use this to plan campus events.

I think this application will add tremendous value to small businesses that stayed away from building their websites. With this tool they can now create a site in just few minutes. Of course Google has not introduced e-commerce feature to this application yet. But with Google Checkout already available, I can see Google extending this feature as an ‘option’ in the future. This opens up doors for Google to generate additional revenue from small local businesses.

Having used this app and created my site, I think this tool has many features that have been picked from Google owned Blogger.com (through Pyra Labs acquisition). Some of the key similarities: ability to customize the page and the layout (dragging elements of the page for example, though it did not work every time I tried), the layout for the color and font edits is strikingly similar to Blogger.com (pops up at the top of the page, with a preview below). It is interesting to note other similarities as well. To me this application seems more like a hybrid between Blogger.com and Jotspot concepts and technology.

I think this is a good application with areas to improve; I found it to be very slow at times especially when editing content (Blogger continues to be fast all the time), Google can probably make this more intuitive, some things like “Navigation” are hard coded, users will benefit from more templates (not just colors, but different layouts) and of course their help center can use more additions which I am sure will happen as more and more users start using this.

Regardless of how successful the tool is now or which segment of population this may appeal to or how much revenue it generates for Google, I like the fact that Google is continuing down the path of free, user friendly and customizable tools for its users to share information. While small businesses can definitely benefit from this, I think this application will help creates sub communities of individuals who more than ever are willing to share information with each other.