Google launches Google Sites
Google is once again treading on Microsoft toes with the launch of its newest product, Google Sites. The new offering allows users to create and manage their own websites, and is based on the wiki technology the company acquired from JotSpot in October 2006. Google Sites is clearly targeted at the market currently dominated by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and the beta-version hosted derivative of SharePoint, Office Live Workspace (which I blogged about
here), while highlighting its own simplicity and low cost - Google Sites is available free to existing Google Apps customers.
Unusually for a new Google product it is not a beta version but a fully released product, no doubt thanks to its history under JotSpot. Most notable is the work that Google has already put into integrating the software with other Google applications - Google Calendar, Google Docs, YouTube and Picasa are all integrated to allow embedding of calendars, documents, videos, etc. into your site.
It is interesting that Google has squarely removed all reference to wikis in its description of Google Sites, at a time when many enterprise software vendors are clamouring to ensure their offerings at least reference Enterprise 2.0 terms such as "wikis" and "blogs". This is the right decision: the Google Sites offering, while far from being a sophisticated site design tool, is much broader than many wiki tools in the market. It will also help Google in its attempt to "cross over" into the enterprise market - despite the success of business-focused products like Google Search Appliance, Google is still very much an Internet brand. While wikis and blogs are very "now", they are far from established in the enterprise, and the terminology can alienate less tech-savvy business users. Google needs to create confidence and trust among the enterprise market, and this branding/marketing decision seems to reflect this.
Clearly Google Sites is not going to displace SharePoint in the short term. But Google continues to challenge the dominance of Microsoft in this space, and yet again it has chosen a services-based approach to achieve this. The debate around whether or not Google will displace Microsoft in office productivity will continue for a long time yet, but in the meantime, Google continues to show perceptive awareness of what it needs to do, as well as the investment capacity and determination to do it.
Labels: collaboration, enterprise 2.0, google, Microsoft
