Google Introduces Web Page Creator
Google Page Creator is a web based application that uses a basic what-you-see is what-you-get style of interface, designed to allow anyone to create and publish web pages, regardless of skill or knowledge level.
"It's as easy to create a page on the web as it is to create one on a word processor," said Justin Rosenstein, product manager for the new tool.
Google Page Creator allows you to arrange text, images or other types of web content and upload the web pages with a single click, without the need to know web programming languages such as HTML or Javascript, or how to configure and transfer pages to a web server.
Rosenstein says the service was the result of frustration he experienced when friends or family members wanted to create web sites but were stymied by technical challenges. He said that he assembled a team within Google to create a simple, easy to use tool as part of a "20% project," in which Google engineers are encouraged to spend a day a week working on non-job related projects.
Google Page Creator is a web-based application that runs on any computer or operating system. To use it, you must have a Google account and a Gmail address. Pages that you create are stored on Google servers using a URL convention of gmailname.googlepages.com.
Each user is provided with 100 megabytes of free storage space, and while there is a limit on the amount of bandwidth a site is allowed, Rosenstein says he doubts most people will ever reach the limit. The limit is primarily in place to foil the efforts of spammers, he said.
There are few restrictions on the type of content Google will allow users to publish, though Rosenstein said there won't be any mechanisms for ecommerce or interactivity.
Judging from the remarkable amount of porn and other adult-oriented content that's been uploaded by users to Googlebase in recent months, it appears that most types of content will be acceptable on Google pages, as well.
Pages hosted on Google Pages are ordinary web pages, and will be included in Google's (and presumably other search engines) web index, though they won't be given any special treatment in ranking.
What's the difference between Google Page Creator and Blogger, the free blog publishing and hosting service also owned by Google? Rosenstein says that Google Page Creator is aimed at people who are interested in publishing a simple, relatively static web site, whereas Blogger is designed for people who want to post frequently, with regularly changing content.
Is this Google's effort at creating a MySpace knockoff? (MySpace is the popular personal home-page cum social network service recently purchased by News Corp. for $580 million). Rosenstein refused to comment on the question.
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