by Playfuls Staff |
24th February 2006
If you’ve been paying some attention to the dealings of the once-just-a-search-engine Google lately, probably the launch of the Google Page Creator hasn’t been much of a surprise. There have been many rumors running around for quite a long time regarding a more profound involvement from Google in the Web services market, and the company is [more] also expected to launch something much more important than Google Page Creator, namely an online Office suite. But, before going to the Office suite, let’s see what the Google Page Creator is all about.
Well, theoretically, it’s a hosting service that also offers an interface that allows the users to publish web-pages. All the pages will be hosted at an address of the type yourdomain.googlepages.com, where yourdomain is the name of the person subscribing to Google’s services (in any case, you shouldn’t hurry to make an account, because the access is temporarily stopped, due to the fact that Google has been overwhelmed by the huge number of persons who wanted to access the service). The hosting limit is just 100 MB, and is more than enough, because the pages’ dimensions are not very big.
Google allows the upload of various files, but, as I’ve tested the service, I’ve noticed that, for example, even if there were no problems uploading a .doc file or a .JPG image with the size of 1 MB, Google Page Creator simply wouldn’t accept a 12 MB archive or a 8 MB MP3. But nobody’s perfect!
Nevertheless, strictly speaking, Google Page Creator is not a site manager. Each page is created and managed as a separate entity, and should you want to link several pages, you’ll have to do it manually. Moreover, don’t expect to find a lot of options. Google has followed its usual principle of effectiveness and simplicity, and even if there are various layouts and various looks (some sort of color templates), the offer is pretty thin for a more picky user.
However, the page management interface is very simple and clear. Publish, Unpublish, Edit, Upload, Create New Page, there are about all the options you’ll find in Google Page Creator’s menu and, frankly speaking, it’s quite enough, as long as you don’t want to create a masterpiece, but just a quick page to show your friends. Because, in the end, that’s the whole idea, and Google even allows you to let your friends know when you’ve created or edited a page. The Tell Your Friends option allows you to send mails from Google Mail. The way in which Google Page Creator handles images is also very smart, so it’s very easy to create a gallery with your favorite pictures.
These are the most important things for now, since the service is just in beta, and will probably remain in this stage for quite a long time, because only sky (and technology) is the limit to what Google might insert in Google Page Creator.
Google Page Creator is much more easier to use than the similar application from Yahoo, and a whole lot faster and intuitive than Microsoft Front Page, which Microsoft is apparently preparing to drop and which was considered the simplest web-design program, up until now.
However, what’s really interesting is the following hypothesis: is Google Page Creator the forefather of an Office suite? By analyzing how Google Page Creator looks like, the facilities it offers and the way in which it works, it’s very likely that in a matter of months Google will be able to come out with an equivalent for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint or Microsoft Excel, all of which will be functioning in a browser window. And if they’ll work as well as Google Page Creator does, than Google has really hit the jackpot. Let’s hope that someone up there, on Mountain View, is hearing us!
