Google Pages Launches

An anonymous reader writes "Google released the first public beta of its Google Pages service Wednesday, allowing users who signed up for the service in January and February to begin creating personal websites using an easy-to-use, browser-based tool. The service gives each user 100 MB of free storage space on Google's servers. To use the Google Page Creator tool, users must have an existing Google account. However, only those who signed up early (in January and February) to use Google Pages have access to the current beta. No new signups are being accepted at this time, Google said. The company is expected to open Page Creator to more widespread use over the next few weeks."

Comments

Temporary could be good!

[jbarr]

That's the one thing that really intrigues me about Google's Page Creator: The concept that it is capable of quickly creating simple, ad-hoc, "temporary pages. While you are absolutely correct about the non-availability of many GeoCities and AngelFire pages, if we know that about GooglePages from the start, then GooglePages won't seem like it's fallen into the same realm. GooglePages is a great place to post temporary or short-term pages for things like events, notes, and other stuff that don't require long-term storage. Once you're "done" with the page, just delete it and that's that. Yes, "grandma" can use it too for her "permanent" pages, but I think the real power of Page Creator is its quick-and-dirty approach.

If Google indexes GooglePages just like other sites, (accessible through Google's Web Search) they should then ensure that GooglePages that get deleted are removed from its index (maybe as an optional checkbox during the delete step?) You see, while we all certainly like archived information through the likes of the Way Back Machine and Google's page cache, is that really necessary for much of life's temporary information to permanently hold onto it? If you want long-term storage, then put it into a blog, a Wiki, or a site geared for long-term hosting.

I think the "killer app" aspect of GooglePages is its potential for temporary Web pages.

What do you think?

-Jim
http://gmailtips.com/
http://pagecreatortips.com/
http://googlepagestips.com/

Re:DeJaVoogle

[thc69]

Speaking of their TOS, does anybody know if they'd allow lightly commercial content? I'd like to advertise for my local extracareercular (can I invent that word?) computer work, a la http://ronanian.googlepages.com/ -- and when will they offer gDNS for virtual hosting?