Google Pages to be Replaced by JotSpot

fyc writes "According to a presentation by Scott Johnson, ex-JotSpot executive and recent Google employee, the JotSpot wiki service acquired late last year by Google is to replace Google's own Pages service. The new service will be called as Google Sites and will launch next year. From the presentation: 'Based on JotSpot collaboration tools, Sites will allow business to set up intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and any number of custom sites based on multi-user collaboration.'"

Comments

Are people still falling for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Put all your valuable business information on our servers. Go ahead, do it. What could go wrong?

Re:Are people still falling for this?

[sqrt(2)]

I hope we're not at the point where merely having a dissenting opinion about the Google constitutes a troll post. There's a need, now more than ever for that opposition voice to be heard. Google is snatching up projects all the time, it's easy to see that their goal is complete control of the business of information management. When it's possible for a company to use Google for everything it's going to be too late to raise privacy and security concerns. Which is why we need to be having that discussion NOW. Google offers these services for free, largely, and if business begins switching over in large numbers to a Google centric data management system YOUR data and YOUR private info will end up in Google's hands just by you doing business with those companies. Now, currently I trust Google more than Microsoft to protect that, they've done nothing yet to shake that trust and they do offer some very valuable services for zero cost, but I do not want them to ever have a monopoly--in any area.

Re:Are people still falling for this?

[Instine]

It's a valid concern (at least for it to be discussed more), but whats the solution? Apart from simply avoiding the net app model? If you want to use the benefits of SaaS, how would you/anyone suggest these concerns are reduced/nulled? Not at all suggesting more can't be done. Just asking what people think should be done to avoid SaaS continually raising the priacy argument...

Re:Are people still falling for this?

[jellomizer]

Often a lot less then what could go wrong if you managed it at the business. Echonomies of scale, For a small business especially one not focused on IT. There data storage of important files are on some laptop which could die any second now. For most small IT Companies they have a server perhaps with some sort of raid, and know they should backup daily but usually get it once a month... Even for Mid sized companies managing all the data and keeping it safe is a lot of work and is expensive. It is expensive for google too but that is what they do and do rather well... So chances are that if you lost your data to googe and it was stolen is a lot less then if you try to manage it yourself, while having other jobs to do.

Re:Are people still falling for this?

[moosesocks]

If google wants to be taken seriously in the enterprise market (due to the obvious privacy implications you mention), they need to start offering network appliances that allow users to privately host their own google service locally without requiring a direct connection to Google.

Of course, that all said, I don't particularly feel that Google's applications are well-suited to the enterprise to begin with. Microsoft's got that market pretty well cornered, and the level of integration provided by Exchange is simply unmatched. Along the same lines, although I find GMail and GCal both to be fantastic, they're both missing that sort of "snappiness" that you'd get from a desktop application.

Google's services are attractive to anyone who can't afford their own server (and the staff to run it). Anyone else should probably look elsewhere (and hopefully, we'll start seeing some good OSS packages that can rival Exchange)

Re:Are people still falling for this?

[cmacb]

I would question whether Google even has a monopoly on search. Having the largest numbers does not a monopoly make.

They certainly don't have a monopoly on anything else. They are beaten easily by Facebook, Myspace, MS Office, Hotmail, Yahoo in areas where there is direct competition for specific products.

Why not just judge a company on what they HAVE done rather than on what they MIGHT do?

The reason Microsoft is still where it is is that people have not applied that principle. On the other hand, a company simply achieving a 51 percent market share doesn't make them unstoppable. Add to that the fact that it would be difficult or impossible for everyone on Earth to coordinate their product selections so that no company ever achieves a 51 percent market share.

I can't think of anything Google could do (other than buying Microsoft) that would lock users into their search technology, and certainly not their web page tool.

Likewise, I wouldn't have a problem using MS Office, if and only if I could use my preferred operating system (Linux) to run it. Office locks you into Windows; you only get full use of Live if you use Office and Windows; you can read your Hotmail with an offline reader as long as that offline reader is vended by MS. If you don't see a difference in the way Microsoft and Google do business, then you are not paying much attention.

I don't have a problem with people attacking Google when they screw up, but somewhere along the way they need to demonstrate that they're not just another Microsoft astroturfer. Comments with supporting evidence are much less likely to be modded troll or flamebait.

Let's agree to clean up the monopolists we already have, then worry about stopping the potential ones.