JotSpot reincarnated as Google Sites

In October 2006, Google acquired JotSpot, a hosted wiki platform for building collaborative Web sites. Sixteen months later, which is like 10 years in Web time, Google is launching a revamped JotSpot as Google Sites.

Rafe Needleman at CNET Webware has a more in-depth post on how Google Sites works.

Google Sites is basically another element in the growing Google Apps suite. Like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Sites is aimed at companies or individuals who need to collaborate, such as for managing projects or classroom activities.

(Credit: Source: Google)

"This is a key last hole in the Google Apps suite," Matt Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise told me. "It is the nucleus for other pieces to fit into for online collaboration."

He also said that Google Apps was a "healthy, growing, and profitable" business for Google, but didn't share the profit numbers. It may be profitable but it is an almost invisible blip on the revenue screen.

The term "wiki" has been banished from Googlespeak as the company tries to mainstream its collaborative applications. "There shouldn't be a distinction between wikis and sites," said product manager Scott Johnston. He hopes that the "edit button" becomes pervasive as the collaborative Web takes hold.

Google Apps has some traction--about 500,000 companies are using the suite--but the non-tech-savvy knowledge worker may not by aware of Google Docs, according to Glotzbach. Google is relying on word of mouth to stimulate small business usage and more direct selling into larger enterprises.

Google is also fighting the stigma of lightweight applications, the notion that they are unable to do everything that a Microsoft SharePoint, SocialText, and other more full-featured business solutions. And, Google has significant distribution advantages over closer competitors such as Zoho.

"The so-called lightweight cloud application isn't for the non-power user," Glotzbach said. "It's actually for the power user. Today's power users aren't writing macros. They are 'power collaborators,' grabbing content from six different places in the cloud and putting on a site and sharing it."

The concept of the power collaborator and creating the applications without high cost and involving IT resources is compelling, and will push the incumbents to lighten up.

For example, companies could create employee directories with profiles pages that can include documents, videos, gadgets or other kinds of content without any heavy lifting. And, at some point, Google Sites will have social-networking capabilities baked in, using the OpenSocial APIs and the Social Graph API, Johnston said but didn't offer a timetable. A socially enabled Google Site would be more similar to what Ning is doing with its social Web platform, allowing users to build their own social networks.

I asked Johnston what took Google so long to relaunch JotSpot. "We looked at what assets we could use, and we didn't want to release a product where we had to change the wheels while we were driving. We have access to infrastructure that scales nearly infinitely and Google search as an underlying technology, so we can take content and make it instantly relevant and searchable," he said. "We also have a best-of-breed online calendar."

In addition, the entire front end to JotSpot was rewritten to adopt the foundation elements, such as the document editor, used in the Google Apps suite, as well as the look and feel. "The core of what we brought was the essence of the wiki and storing versions of the content," Johnston said. "Also, when you created a page in JotSpot you could choose from different kinds of pages." Google Sites supports five pages types and will add more in the future, he said.

In the future, Google Apps will add more capabilities for sharing video, a la YouTube, with group and voice capabilities, Glotzbach said. At this point Google doesn't plan to create a marketplace for creators of Google Site templates and themes, but it will take advantage of the iGoogle gadgets and APIs that allow developers to embed objects with the service.

Google Sites is a key piece of functionality for Google Apps. It gives the suite a way to integrate all kinds of components in support of accomplishing a particular task. Adding social capabilities and a database to the suite will turn up the heat on Microsoft to show what it has waiting in the wings to go beyond the prodigious Microsoft Office.

[dahowlett]

Great post Dan - unfortunately I don't share your enthusiasm for Sites. Usability issues really spoil it - for me.

[mrcoder]

The problem with web apps, is the timeouts. Session -- an internal timer which counts down on the server side between each client-side interaction with the web server -- tends to last only 10 or 20 minutes. After session times out, you lose your your work.

The conventional "web session timeout" is essentially a bad fit with types of work that require more than 20 minutes of your time... and virtually all real work does require hours of time, meaning anything beyond mere poking around web sites and surfing for fun.

How many work creations really take less than 20 minutes to make?

Secondly, web apps just aren't as stable and reliable and predictable as client side software. If you think there are a lot of bugs and issues with a famous-brand client side word processor that's dominated the marketplace for years? Just wait until you try writing in a web based word processor for hours at a time. Count the issues you encounter.

It's a whole different ballgame when your important work needs to get done.

I'll take client side software thank you, when important stuff needs to be safe from inadvertent mistakes and lossage.

Sun OpenOffice for example is free too, but it's client-side software. Google's word processor is too shaky, as good as it is. Why? There are just too many potential points of failure, such as your network connectivity, your ISP, etc.

I am a software developer by profession fwiw.

"After session times out, you lose your your work."

Have you used Google Docs & Spreadsheets? B/c it sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about. Even if there is a time-out on YOUR client side, for whatever reason (which I have not experienced), the Server app autosaves your work literally like almost every single letter you type.

[mirano353]

This is NOT the jotspot we used. Unless I am mistaken, much of the really useful functionality of the <real> jotspot has been dumbed-down. For example, there is no Install Apps as far as I can tell. Therefore, there are no useful Apps like: Blog, Project Manager, Bug Reporter, etc. As far as I can tell, there is no way to define a group within the site - so all members of the site can see all pages in the site. Ugh. And I really waited for jot to resurface after all these months. What a waste of a really good <old> site.

[gryabov]

mr coder: If you have used Google services such as G-Mail you will see that it automatically saves your data while you are working on it and there should really be no reason there would be a timeout or loss of data.

[slmader]

Is Google's push to abandon the word "wiki" good or bad?
http://www.ikiw.org/2008/02/28/the-nasty-four-letter-word-that-must-be-banished-from-the-web/

[gggg sssss]

I cannot for the life of me fathom why anyone would put confidential business data onto Google's public servers. How do you back it up? How do you move it? How do you control access? How do you manage compliance with any of the hundreds of governmental requirements? How do you terminate access? How do you prevent spoofing - look at all of the virus laden "there is a new comment..." spam coming from blogspot. What are people thinking? ROTFLMAO

[westrajc]

New Google Sites Application Misses Mark

After waiting expectantly for the release of Google Sites, the success to Jotspot, for more than a year, I must confess I'm pretty disappointed in the result. The user interface is clunky and non-intuitive and offers little new in the way of collaborative tools, other than Joomla-esq shared web page editing.

What happened? Google already has a terrific widget enabled web page creation tool. It's called Blogger! Why didn't they use that technology to make dropping various functional elements onto a page easy?

The ability to quickly create an Intranet/Xtranet of four to twenty pages is what most of my SMB clients are looking for. Doing this with SharePoint has always been too developer and infrastructure intensive, leaving us to recommend products like WebOffice (formerly Intranets.com) and Blue Tie as web-based collaboration tools.

BlueTie in unique in that it offers unique ways for partners to monetize the solution and generate a unique ongoing revenue stream. In fact, BlueTie was recently recognized as an OnMedia Top 100 Winner.

Google has missed the mark badly with its Google Sites application. It's unfortunate, because it takes the pressure off Microsoft to improve SharePoint's ease of use and Cisco to lower the cost of WebOffice.

Until Google releases a Google Sites application that is significantly easier to use and functional, I will continue to recommend WebOffice, Blue Tie or our own TeamPro application as a Intranet/Xtranet solution.

[tharvey111]

It is true this version of sites does not have nearly the capabilities Notes or Sharepoint may offer but I think organizations will quickly realize it has enough functions to offer an alternative especially when complimented by offerings from open source software like xaware that offers simple, fast and low cost integration and mashup capabilities.

[jpring]

I for one was a bit disappointed after a year of anticipation. Someday they will get it right but for the time being IMO Sites isn't ready for prime time. I'm biased (full disclosure) but for those looking for an alternative you should check out ProjectSpaces - which focuses on speed, simplicity and ease-of-use.