The last word (for now) on Google Sites

The launch of Google Sites has spurred closer examination of the Google Apps suite and of some of the claims or innuendo from Google executives regarding the enterprise fitness of its cloud-based applications.

Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb compiles a dossier from recent posts on ZDNet and other sites that strip bare the Google Sites bride. Google plays the backdoor game--IT isn't giving you solutions you can use, so raise the software pirate flag, and use Google Sites for free to manage projects:

Google is actually going about marketing to the enterprise market in a pretty ingenious way--they're not. Instead, they're bypassing the IT department (who would, in all honesty, probably laugh at the thought) and marketing their suite on the sly directly to the employees themselves: "Are the tools provided by your IT department too unwieldy to use? Is IT too slow to respond to your needs? Then forget IT and use Google Apps instead!" This is definitely a good plan for Google in the short term, but it's not one that is going to be good for them in the long run...especially when IT catches on to what their users are doing.

It's not good in the long run because sooner or later, IT and centralized control rear their heads. It's a cultural power struggle between IT and users that will go on forever.

Google is applying its guerrilla tactics, ingratiating itself with users and hoping that by the time it has more security, integration, service-level agreements, and less onerous terms of service, the battle to conquer the enterprise--and tweak Microsoft--will be won. It's not a short-term campaign.

An example of a Google Sites project wiki.

(Credit: Google)

The marquee customer, among 500,000, touted by Google for Google Apps is Genentech. It so happens that Genentech Chairman and CEO Arthur Levinson is on Google's board. But that is beside the point.

Google Sites is not enterprise-class. It doesn't claim to be enterprise-class, unless you would define the category as wiki tools that:

• are not deeply integrated into corporate infrastructure

• lack service-level agreements

• require that you give the host a "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and nonexclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services"

(That last part is lifted from the Google Terms of Service. See also the Google Apps Standard Edition Agreement.)

The fact is that wikis, ranging from free, such as Twiki, to more enterprise-scale solutions, such as Atlassian, MindTouch and Socialtext, are spreading like wildfire throughout corporations.

Google, the 800-pound search elephant, is just making its appearance in this space, with an easy-to-use product for individuals, smaller businesses, and rakish departments of larger companies that is still under construction.

[PBwikiChris]

Don't forget about PBwiki! After all, I think we have more paid customers than anyone (in the thousands), and we definitely have more hosted wikis in business and education than any other player.

I agree that Google is playing a dangerous game with IT. It was one thing to offer independent services like AdWords, or to target individuals as with Gmail.

I can't imagine any company wanting to put its most important information on something that requires you to give Google a permanent license to any content you enter into the wiki.

Why not befriend IT? Most IT folks are no more enamored with SharePoint than the end-user. A true on-demand collaboration tool that makes it easy for IT to enforce policy should be a real winner.

[PBwikiChris]

Oh yeah...PBwiki's paying customers include Facebook, Symantec, Oracle, DePaul University, and the FDA, and we won all those customers fair and square without any board-level connections or personal favors being invoked.

If we're secure enough for Symantec and the FDA, presumably we're secure enough for most purposes!

[PBwikiChris]

By the way, here's one of our press releases that plays up the David and Goliath theme:

PBwiki Trumps Google Sites With Thousands Of Paying Customers, Over 400,000 Wikis, Millions Of Users

http://www.prleap.com/pr/115391/

[poison1080]

I think google sites is great. Although in hindsight I would have released team edition first and then domain specific google apps. It was the missing piece in the suite. Sure the page creation service was good but who does static pages anymore. They didnt have a wiki creation tool, blooger doesnt quite fill the bill, and I am thrilled its available.

Their marketing is spot on and obviously causes great fear in the Redmond biased jounalists. Sure if youre working on a new nano technology breakthrough and you dont want to give out company secrets, youll do your business on a private intranet. Because if youre working on something like that you have the bucks for it! And youre IT department is properly funded! But if youre not or in the public sector youre struggling to stay afloat, your IT department is under staffed, under funded, or doesnt exist. Heck you need a google site to get the resources together just to build and host an in-house wiki.

This is about empowering people with the tools they need to communicate, collaborate, and accomplish their goals.

[couldnotunregister]

Yes, it's not a "real" wiki. No, I do not want to give to Google a "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and nonexclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services"

But ENUGH with the PBiki self-prmotion already.

[vshamanovsky]

And SocialText\SharePoint - SocialPoint integration services.

[nzfrank]

I was a bit surprised that I had to choose my company domain as the team unit signifier. We'd certainly want more than one team and many of the teams would want isolation from other members of the company, particularly on sensitive projects.

[sgiorama]

Dan,

I think you are cherry picking the Sites Terms of Service a bit unfairly. The section that was quoted is as follows:

"Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion."

Clearly Google doesn't claim ownership to your content however if you decide to publish your content to the public you are granting them a license to use/distribute/index the content. I'm not sure that's a Faustian bargain considering they spider and index all content that is publicly available on the web. If you don't want to grant such license then publish your site via some other means.

[sbostedor]

I really don't think that the sites app is Google's attempt to bypass IT departments. I think that they are trying to cater to the businesses that do not have a real IT department in place. They're not stupid. They know that an IT department would simply block access to the URL if they didn't want users to access the site.

[JJJoseph]

This is where using Google will create problems:
"Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion."

Just like Google will remove anything it doesn't like on YouTube or Google Calendar, Google will sabotage your business if it doesn't like something you say. This is the creepy side of Google, and it will cause no end of pain.

[ElehpantFriend]

Having searched for the average weight of an elephant on Google, I found that "African elephants are the largest land animals with body growth continuing for up to 30 years. Bulls (males) may reach a height of 9-13 feet (3-41/2 m) at the shoulder and weigh between 9,000-13,000 pounds (4,500-6,000 kg). Cows (females) are smaller in size, averaging 7-9 feet (2.5-3 m) at the shoulder and weighing between 4,500-7,000 pounds."

As far as elephants go, I think Google deserves to be a little more than 800 pounds. And I echo the sentiment earlier: "This is about empowering people with the tools they need to communicate, collaborate, and accomplish their goals." Don't fear the legalese and don't fear the free apps. Google empowers people with access to useful technology and plenty of information. For free! This is a good thing.

[A_N_Onymous]

PBwiki is ****

[ron01230]

This battle is reminiscent of the battle waged by users & IT over the introduction of the PC in the workplace. IT lost that battle and it will lose this one too; eventually.