May 22, 2008 4:47 AM PDT

Google Sites for everyone: GeoCities 2.0?

by Caroline McCarthy
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Google announced on its official blog late Wednesday that Google Sites, its simplified Web site creation service, is now available to any registered Google user.

Previously, only businesses with Google Apps accounts and their own domains had had access to Google Sites.

Unlike the free Web site creation services of yesteryear (and by yesteryear, I mean 1998), Google Sites are collaborative, which engineering manager Andrew Zaeske said in the announcement makes them ideal for "team projects, company intranets, community groups, classrooms, clubs, family updates, you name it."

No HTML knowledge is required, and sites are hosted for free at Google domains like sites.google.com/organicwheatgrassmoothieclub.

Google Sites got its start when Google acquired wiki platform JotSpot in 2006.

Originally posted at The Social
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline.
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by T-Guy May 22, 2008 6:37 AM PDT
Seemed inevitable. I was wondering why it took so long...
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by T-Guy May 22, 2008 6:37 AM PDT
Seemed inevitable. I was wondering what was taking them so long...
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by Silver_2000 May 22, 2008 7:20 AM PDT
accoring to the docs the urls will be
http://sites.google.com/site/sites/SITENAME

isn't that redundant x3 ?

Once you create a site you find that the URL is really
http://sites.google.com/site/SITENAME/

Which is only redundant X2

At some point im sure they will allow you to attach these sites to a domain ...
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by QuadFather May 22, 2008 9:52 AM PDT
Seemed inevitable. I was wondering why it was taking them so long...
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by andrew.mager May 22, 2008 10:37 AM PDT
Seemed inevitable. I was wondering why it was taking them so long... Oh, right, they have been busy redesigning their search results page.
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by tzucc May 22, 2008 6:40 PM PDT
not too impressed with the page editor, basically a rich text editor on a web page, wow... check out the page editor at http://pikiwiki.com ... alot more flexible. Also pikipages app on Facebook allows you to make more interesting web pages than Google Sites.
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by Papa G July 2, 2008 2:27 PM PDT
But hey, whatever happened to Google Pages? It seems like it just died! I can't find it on Google's service list anymore, although I can access it at pages.google.com. The new service is better.
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