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Google Pages Launches

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-google-wide-web dept.

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."

49 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. DeJaVoogle by ExE122 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny, I could've sworn GeoCities and Angelfire had something like this many many years ago. Complete with page building tools and wizards...

    The only true advantage I see to this is that Google gives you a LOT more disk space for free, wheras you have to pay for more with G&A... but perhaps that's why we're seeing "Sorry, we are unable to offer new accounts today. We appreciate your interest and invite you to add your Gmail address to our wait list. We'll let you know when we've enabled your account."

    I'm not trying to advertise for G&A, I just don't see how this is something to jump up and down about. Search engine, Email, webpages, online stores/auctions... they're just becoming the next Yahoo.

    --
    "Man Bites Dog
    Then Bites Self"

    --
    Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
    1. Re:DeJaVoogle by holdenholden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That, the the priviledge to have your content indexed, searched, and linked to your other Google accounts (gmail, adwords, analytics). No thanks. I think I will skip on this one.

    2. Re:DeJaVoogle by tehshen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ... they're just becoming the next Yahoo.

      Is that so bad a thing? I kind of liked Yahoo.

      GeoCities was a nice service, but was let down by the ads pane (pain?) taking over half the screen. Yahoo! mail was nice but suffered from too low storage. Lots of people here are turned off by "portal"-style pages with loads of links on them - Google put their search page first and moved all the links someplace else.

      I've noticed that Google seem to wait for a technology to develop, see where it trips up, then make its own GVersion. Kind of nifty, really.

      --
      Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
    3. Re:DeJaVoogle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Just to make up a random statistic I bet, ooh, 50% of all dead links on the internet are to Angelfire and Geocities sites (the other half seem to be to ~someoneshome/some.edu )

      Some time ago I got to not even clicking to visit a site if I saw it was Angelfire or Geocities. Is it because all those people who built sites lost interest, moved onto other things? Certainly a percentage did use these free hosts as their first forray into the world of the web, but I bet you that's not the reason. I'm betting the largest number of those sites were taken down, either because they infringed on some trivial copyright, or because they broke the ever more ridiculous TOS of the hosts.

      My point is this, publicly hosting user content is a NIGHTMARE. How are Google going to handle the slew of bad publicity that befalls them when they take down little Johnys "Bus route enthusiats website" because it contains "copyrighted" material? Are Google suddenly going to become porn police deciding where the line falls for those revealing prom pics that the teenage girls put up?

      Google are heading into a minefield. I'm making no judgement one way or the other but expect to see a LOT of "Google are evil because.... / No they're not because...." stories very soon.

    4. Re:DeJaVoogle by jbarr · · Score: 3, Informative

      The really nice thing about Page Creator is that it provides simple Web pages without the annoyance of ads and "ad gadgets" that so many others include. Page Creator Web pages, so far, are clean, and easy to make. If Google eventually does include ads, you can bet that it'll be unobtrusive like most of its other services.

      Google doesn't always come out with "new" products, but it often implements them in new and fresh ways.

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

      --
      My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
    5. Re:DeJaVoogle by se7en11 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I've noticed that Google seem to wait for a technology to develop, see where it trips up, then make its own GVersion. Kind of nifty, really.

      This is what Apple is doing and doing quite sucessfully. They just add an "i" to things though.

    6. Re:DeJaVoogle by bjpirt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      agreed, I'm getting increasingly nervous about just how much of your data google could index if you let them. I'd be curious about how many people using google desktop are aware of the privacy implacations. Most end users just see it as a cool way of finding stuff on your computer, completely unaware that data is being sent to google.

      I know, I know - do no evil

      (for now)

    7. Re:DeJaVoogle by aichpvee · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Kind of seems like Google dropped the ball on this one, though. Other than Google Pages being so limited that it's almost useless, it seems a bit broken even in the limited things it does. For instance I put an image on a page, and dragged it to one side. No matter what I did after that I couldn't drag it back to center, just to either side. There also didn't seem to be a clear or easy way to switch which page is your "Home Page".

      --
      The Farewell Tour II
    8. Re:DeJaVoogle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Are Google suddenly going to become porn police deciding where the line falls for those revealing prom pics that the teenage girls put up?

      Links please. kthxbye

  2. Google Launches by Mattygfunk1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It'll be interesting to watch how cautiously they approach this launch. After the Google Analytics launch debarcle I'll watch intensely at how much they've learned.

  3. Pages does not support Safari by mytec · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sorry, your web browser is not yet supported. Our programming wizards tried their darndest to get Google Page Creator to work with as many browsers as possible. But alas, even the most expert practitioners of web sorcery must sleep now and again, lest their JavaScript magic run dry. So, for now, you'll need either to download a new version of Firefox or download a new version of Internet Explorer (Windows only), and then come right back.

    1. Re:Pages does not support Safari by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's because the Safari team have spent too much time on CSS 2 (just so they can release smug acid test press releases) rather then getting the browser to work in real world situations.

      Apple engineers, if you're reading this, please start working on your DOM model & Javascript. As things stand your rather crappy browser is hard to support.

  4. I was one of the lucky few by PIPBoy3000 · · Score: 5, Informative
    I managed to sign up very early, so I got to play with it a fair bit. Since I'm a web developer, I was most interested in the technology rather than having yet another web site I maintain. Here's the things they did well, in my opinion:
    • The use of AJAX is well done. Pages save by themselves, you can drag and align images, and there's a nifty file upload utility.
    • There's simple versioning, allowing work on pages before publishing.
    • The HTML editor is super-easy. They do let you play with the raw HTML, which might cause problems down the road.
    In general, I think it'll be a nice tool for people wanting a small little web site with a handful of pages. It doesn't do other things very well, such as maintaining navigation between pages or doing any sort of interactive pages. Still, Google tries hard to capture the 80% useage and I think they've done so with this little application.
    1. Re:I was one of the lucky few by pete-classic · · Score: 5, Informative

      On the down side, they claim XHTML 1.0 Strict, but the pages they produce aren't even well-formed. (Notably, they don't close br, hr, and img tags.)

      They also use divs where they should be using spans (if they must use these generic tags). And they leave out some required attributes.

      Overall, it's a pretty sloppy job.

      -Peter

    2. Re:I was one of the lucky few by Inda · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You say that it's possible to edit the raw HTML but is it also possible to use and tags? How about adding links to external style sheets? Textboxes and dropdown menus etc?

      Will Google serve my pages without line breaks as they do with their pages? I hope not as it's a nightmare to read and understand.

      Does their editor create nice HTML or does it look like MS Word HTML?

      Can I upload ZIP files, videos, MP3s etc?

      I can't wait to have a play. Seems like it could be fun.

      --
      This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
    3. Re:I was one of the lucky few by mancontr · · Score: 2, Informative

      It removes page breaks, create better HTML than MS Word but far from perfect, and you can upload any filetype.

    4. Re:I was one of the lucky few by TOWebstress · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've also got a beta account on Google pages, and am a web designer. The HTML it creates is passable, but not good. It can't touch the horror that MS Word creates (but what could?), but it still uses tags, which I find a bit odd. You can manipulate the raw code, but it's not set up in a way that would encourage the average user to do so. Overall, I found it a comparable product to the other basic WYSIWYG web building tools that have been online for years...a cleaner interface (a la Google, they do that well), but really nothing new. It's easy to use though. One needn't know so much as how a site is structured in order to build a site, and linking between pages is pretty intuitive. There doesn't seem to be any way to see an overall structure of the site you're creating though. You can end up just building and adding pages from here, there any everwhere, but never having the benefit of seeing a site or file structure to keep architecture in check. That said, I suspect that most of the people who use this product will be building little site...a few pages...and don't have big demands for advanced features.

      --
      You see the look on my face, and yet you keep talking.
    5. Re:I was one of the lucky few by garaged · · Score: 2, Informative

      no script and style tags AFAIK, its quite well protected to avoid XSS, try to do any onEvent and it will be striped.

      It's a pretty neat work on that side, the XHTML issue may be another story, but I think is quite good by now, it can be better really soon.

      --
      I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
  5. Email scrapers probably like this ... by xmas2003 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    USERNAME@gmail.com can be obtained from USERNAME.googlepages.com and a list of the later can be pulled by using Google to search for site: googlepages.com

    --
    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
    1. Re:Email scrapers probably like this ... by ricepudd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      From my experience, many ISP's embed your username somewhere in the URL to their free webspace offerings. Is this any different?

      According to this page, spammers hadn't caught on to this the last time the page was updated.

    2. Re:Email scrapers probably like this ... by jbarr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But then again, Gmail's spam handling is excellent, so I personally wouldn't worry about it.

      I receive about 300-400 spam emails per month, and typically Gmail flags them correctly. I almost never get false positives, and only occasionally, it misses a few, but overall, spam really hasn't been an issue for me with Gmail.

      So Will PAgeCreator increase spam? Probably, but it really shouldn't impact Gmail users that much.

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

      --
      My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
    3. Re:Email scrapers probably like this ... by Inda · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Is Scraping really that much of a problem these days?

      My email address up there ^^ has been advertised on Slashdot since the start of the year. I've had exactly 16 emails sent to that address so far. The first one was from me testing it out, one has been from a fellow Slashdotter and the rest Spam. Where there's been an opt-out link, I've used it and there have been no repeat offenders.

      I'm going to put my real email address back up after Spam #20. That's how much of a problem I think Scraping is.

      --
      This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
    4. Re:Email scrapers probably like this ... by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe they just don't bother about SpamGourmet addresses? ;-)

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  6. Erm, I already had access... by ricepudd · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm a little confused. I signed up to GooglePages in February when Slashdot first reported this story, and I've been happily been able to log in and edit my site ever since... I take it from this article that this hasn't been the case for everyone?

  7. Do you get the feelling... by simong · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That someone at Google is browsing Yahoo! just a little too much?

  8. Initial impressions by simon_hibbs2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    GooglePages offers a very basic set of editing tools and a bunch of pre-defined page templates. It's pretty similar in usability to the GeoCities tools I used a while back, but the big difference is that it's all in-browser editing. With GeoCities I had to download an editor app and fire it up if I wanted to work on my pages, whereas with GooglePages you can immediately start entering content which makes it much more user friendly. I almost gave up of GeoCities several times due to the initial configuration process.

    I wish Google had better integration, or even just basic links between it's services. Logged into Gmail and want to edit your GooglePages? Tough, you might as well open a seperate browser tab and navigate there from scratch. Likewise if you have a personalised Google home page - you can load a widget into it linking to your gmail, but again if you're in Gmail there's no easy way to go to your Google homepage reliably.

    I know these are 'beta' services and they're beign incrementaly improved - the chat client in Gmail is nice - but Gmail has been in beta for a year or so now and how difficult would it be to just put simple links in place?

    Simon

  9. nice,but... by penguin-collective · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does anybody actually still just edit static web pages? And does anybody still edit navigational structures by hand instead of using a CMS for maintaining the navigational elements?

    It seems to me that a home page site should, at a minimum, support static pages, blogs, a gallery, calendar, comments, and a file archive under a common navigational structure.

    So, this seems like a neat tour-de-force in AJAX, but I think it's missing where the world has been moving over the last few years.

    1. Re:nice,but... by Spad · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Clearly you haven't visited many personal websites lately. Most of them are exactly the same as they have been for years - namely some poorly coloured text on a tiled image background with a few pictures of their pets and a huge animated .gif for the title.

      Suprisingly few people actually have the knowledge or inclination to go as far as putting up photo galleries, blogs, calendars and other associated crap on their own personal homepage - there are plenty of other services (read: MySpace for the mostpart) that do that for you.

    2. Re:nice,but... by Skapare · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I still edit static web pages, if what you mean is the construction of the page layout and design. I even code HTML directly in most cases because I had to learn HTML since various HTML creator programs are still too limited to be able to do everything.

      If you mean hand building the navigational layout, how the hell is some CMS program gonna know what I want? So you probably mean whether I actually put the navigational elements in the pages or just specify them somewhere else and let the pages be built for me. So far I haven't seen a CMS system that doesn't suck, so I either do build them by hand (if you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself), or in a few cases, I write programs to do it (and usually in C though some now in in Pike).

      Show me a CMS system that's easy to use (can be used w/o a GUI, too), generates pages that do NOT have query strings (e.g. the junk after a "?"), uses decent names for URLs (not a bunch of coded numbers), and does not require a database.

      But all that is for my own web sites I host on my own web servers. For public home page websites, like GeoCities, MySpace, or GooglePages, some kind of web based creation tool is essential, given the otherwise vast diversity of environments the tools would have to work in. There, of course, a database is needed. But that would be a highly custom CMS. I'm not running a public home page site, and am damned glad I'm not. I wouldn't want to be so limited.

      Still, some nice free JavaScript that implements web interfaces might be interesting. Maybe I should go look for some (never have even looked before).

      --
      now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  10. I tried it - seems well implemented by MarkWatson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I run two of my own servers but I signed up because I was looking for a simple web hosting service to recommend to a few non-technical friends. The editing features are simple enough to use. I ended up putting a boring little rant on Spirituality and Responsibility on my free googlepages account - nothing that I would put on my professional web sites, and material that is probably too boring even for my blog :-)

  11. Advertising? by balster+neb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What I'm not able to figure out is what kind of advertising is going to be there on user pages. Yahoo Geocities has a huge advertising pane on the right side of every page. I wonder how google will deal with inserting ads. If anyone here has got Google Pages access, what kind of advertising is present on the pages?

    Another thing that's not clear: how much bandwidth they offer. Geocities has a daily bandwidth limit per user. If the limit is exceeded, the user's page isn't accesible for the rest of the day. It would be interesting to see how Google deals with this.

    1. Re:Advertising? by mancontr · · Score: 2, Informative

      I use it, and don't see any ad.
      About the bandwidth limit, I dunno, haven't reached it..

    2. Re:Advertising? by dykofone · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I could imagine they would start to offer AdSense accounts to the Google Pages users. It gives the flexibility to insert the ads where you want, has the incentive of receiving money for clicks, and Google still makes cash.

      Just a random guess though.

  12. Re:Dupe by strider44 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unfortunately it's not a dupe when it's reporting new news. Just as Microsoft releasing the beta for Windows Vista isn't a dupe of Microsoft announcing that there will be a Windows Vista, this is not a dupe of that article. Didn't the "google released this Wednesday" clue you in that the article might actually be reporting something different than the article from more than a month ago, even if they are on the same software?

  13. I didn't like it by khendron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I tried it yesterday, and didn't like it.

    Oh, it's a groovy implementation of AJAX, but I found it was very awkward to use. It was restrictive enough to be frustrating, yet flexible enough to be confusing. I think Google was shooting for that perfect balance between usability and features, and missed.

    --
    Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
  14. Re:Dupe by sarabob · · Score: 4, Informative

    yes, but no matter how much TFA says it was released on Wednesday, it's been around since the last article. I built a site, other people built sites. This is nothing new, just TFA being slow.

  15. you're supporting my point by penguin-collective · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You are supporting my point: the "home page" has been replaced by other services, which incidentally also generate an externally visible page. The people who still attempt to create a classical home page generate something that's ugly and obsolete.

    1. Re:you're supporting my point by Fourier · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The people who still attempt to create a classical home page generate something that's ugly and obsolete.

      Ugly, perhaps, but hardly obsolete. No-frills static HTML is accessible to everyone, whether they're reading on a high-powered standards-compliant browser, a mobile phone, a textmode browser, or a screen reader.

  16. That's strange... by Zaatxe · · Score: 3, Informative

    However, only those who signed up early (in January and February) to use Google Pages have access to the current beta.

    I signed up to it less than a week ago and 15 minutes ago I got an e-mail saying I could already use it. And it's true, I can.

    --
    So say we all
  17. Off-site storage? by Life700MB · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Will they allow to use those 100Mb to store files to be linked and served from free hosted pages in other servers?


    --
    Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

    1. Re:Off-site storage? by ender- · · Score: 3, Informative

      Will they allow to use those 100Mb to store files to be linked and served from free hosted pages in other servers?

      Well thus far I have been able to upload pictures and link to them from offsite without any problems. Not sure if they will continue to allow that or not. I'm also not sure what kind of bandwidth restrictions they might place on it. I suppose I could post a largish pic to the next Fark photoshop contest and see how it does.

      --
      Nothing to see here
  18. Things that make you go hmmm... by SwashbucklingCowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google gives away 2 GB with a Gmail account, but only 100 MB for web access. Why the difference?

    1. Re:Things that make you go hmmm... by cinnamoninja · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The difference is that storage is cheap, but bandwidth is expensive.

      If you store 1 GB of mail, you will probably only access each individual message 5 times, ever. If you put up 1 GB of data on the web, you want it to be downloaded by as many people as possible, every day for the live of the page.

      Cinnamon

  19. I want this! by SpaghettiPattern · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just a place I can put my little bit of GPL-ed code where it is accessible to anyone. Sometimes a project is just too small for sourceforge.

    --

    I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
  20. Hear, hear! by MisterSquid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apple engineers, if you're reading this, please start working on your DOM model & Javascript.

    In the past, my university's IT departments were models of Windows-centric ignorance regarding Mac OS X and Unix-workalikes. That's since changed and when I call about a network problem and tell them that I'm running OS X, they take my reports seriously rather than asking me to reboot my computer.

    This last term (Winter quarter) my university introduced web-based grade submission. I pointed Safari at the website and was peremptorily notified that my browser (Safari 2.0.3) was not supported for not having a coherent DOM.

    Apple does a lot of things right, especially as regards standards. But why does Apple choose to screw up so royally with something as important to developers as the DOM? This, really, is egg on Apple's face.

    --
    blog
  21. Makes sense.. by Rob+Kaper · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If people depend on Google for their searches, e-mail, instant messaging, maps, satellite views, advertising and news (beta).. they might as well use it for their web presence.

    Anyone who has ever worked for the KGB must be so jealous at the rate of voluntary user data centralisation.

  22. Save As... by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's so exciting when a company like Google can be such the object of obsession that when it rolls out a "New Document" feature, that's front page (pun intended) news.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  23. Google Site Information by VeryHotTopic · · Score: 2, Informative

    FYI, the site is http://pages.google.com/ From the site, you will learn a few things. 1) No technical knowledge is required. You can build high-quality web pages without having to learn HTML or use complex software. 2) What you see is what you'll get. You can edit your pages right in your browser, seeing exactly how your finished product will look every step along the way. 3) You dont need to worry about hosting. Your web pages will live on your own site at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com/

  24. So I googled for "Pages Launches" already... by thewils · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now what?

    --
    Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.