Google is venturing into new Internet waters — again.
Google’s quest to conquering the web rages on… How? Why, of course, by launching yet another web-based service. This time, it is something really beefy and it is likely to cause quite some fuss.
The search giant officially launched Google Page Creator to beef up its ever-evolving Web-based toolbox. Google’s new service will compete with products from Apple, Adobe, Microsoft and MySpace…
Google Page Creator, which is in beta, has sample layouts and lets’ people type in content, upload images and publishes their pages, without knowing HTML.
The Google Web Page Creator service combines an online WYSIWYG webpage designer with site hosting, without any advertisements whatsoever. People can create multiple linked pages and are allowed 100MB of storage on the service. The free service requires a Gmail account and supports either Internet Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 1.0, or higher.
Specifically, Google Page Creator is targeting the Web site design market. The company touts the product as a "free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish useful, attractive Web pages in just minutes."
Web pages are created and modified via a very well put together AJAX-based interface, similar to the one that can be seen in Gmail ‘one of the best available on the net’. All the basic actions can be performed, such as adding headlines, headings, subheadings, formatted text, bullet lists, hyperlinks and images.
Page Creator is just another way in which Google can get more unique content than the other guy while building its index, gathering more data and expanding its reach, said Jason Dowdell, who operates MarketingShift, a media research and technology Web site. "The next step is adding social networking."
No-Brainer Development
Google is tapping into ease of use, much as it does with its various other services. No technical knowledge is required to use Page Creator. That means users can build Web pages without having to learn HTML or use special software.
Page Creator users can edit pages right in the Web browser and see exactly how the finished product will look each step along the way, Google said. What is more, they do not have to pay a penny in Web hosting fees. Users have access to four basic templates and 41 designs in the beta version.
Of course, the Web page would not have a traditional URL. The site’s URL will be configured like so: http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com. Each user can store up to 100 megabytes of text and images.
It would be a great injustice not to mention the wealth of “looks” and “layouts” the Page Creator offers, an excellent means of customizing your designs. Layouts define the organization of content on the page, while the look is composed of base background and foreground colors, font size, color and face, header and footer design and so on. They are all very tasteful and range from simple and elegant to colorful, optimistic and nonconformist.
Formatting text with the various available options: columns, colors, sizes, typefaces, and so on works just as in any other text editor.
Everything integrates nicely with the content you already have on your homepage, published or not. For example, when you want to add an image, you have the option of inserting one of the images you uploaded with just one click ‘a handy thumbnail grid is shown’, after which you can use the floating toolbar to specify the image display size and resizing is done automatically. The image can be also moved around due to the transparently-drag-and-drop feature. Check out the pictures to see how these work.
Hyperlinks work similarly; you may link to one of the pages you have already created, to an uploaded file, an external site or an email address.
Advanced features of the Page Creator include the ability to directly edit the underlying HTML code for any element, undo/redo levels and live preview of the page being currently modified without publishing it first. The address at which your pages are published follows this format: http://username.googlepages.com/pagename.
Web Developers React
Could the mighty Google be looking to put pricier Web developers out of business?
It is Google, which is a little scary because the company could at any time acquire another company that provides Web sites for US$199 and blend that into its offering, Sostre & Associates Principal Analyst Pedro Sostre told TechNewsWorld.
Google is not the first to offer these types of pages, of course. Go Daddy has a similar service, and Yahoo has its discounted Web hosting and design services aimed at small businesses.
People all over the world have started to create homepages using Google’s new service and are already finding bugs and suggesting improvements.
AdWords Advantages
It seems Google is really moving to capitalize on these small AdWords advertisers that do not know how to make Web sites themselves, Sostre said. "Rolling out Page Creator is just one more way Google can gain the loyalty of these customers."
Google crawls-pages created with Page Creator within a few hours. This is an advantage for users of the program, with Google boasting 75 percent of the nearly 2.5 billion searches Nielsen//NetRatings tracked in January 2006. That is good news — and bad news — for AdWords buyers.
With Page Creator, the company has drawn a distinction between Web sites and Web pages, saying that a page is a "single document with its own Web address," whereas a site is a "collection of pages with a common sub-domain," or the "xxxxxxx.com" portion of the URL. "During this initial testing period," Google said, people can create only pages, not sites.
Google cannot be accused of being overly creative in naming this service, but the offered features sure do compensate: easy to use but much-more-than-just-basic webpage editing capabilities, one-click instant publishing, 100MB hosting space, name.googlepages.com address, no ads…, but who knows what the future brings?
Google Page Creator is still in an early testing phase. Google is inviting Gmail account holders to take the program for a test drive. To access the page log on to: http://pages.google.com with your Gmail account.