Google Offers Team Web Site Publishing Service

SAN FRANCISCO(Reuters) – Google Inc said on Wednesday it is offering a simple Website publishing tool for office workers to set up and run their teamcollaboration sites, taking aim at Microsoft Corp’s rival SharePointfranchise.

Google Sites, as the new site publishing service is known, is ascaled back version of JotSpot, an easy-to-edit service fororganizations and individuals to set up and edit Web sites that Googlehad acquired 16 months ago for undisclosed terms.

The new service, the latest stage in the Internet leader’s push intothe market for business and educational users, allows non-technicalusers to organize and share digital information such as Web links,calendars, photos, videos, presentations, attachments and otherdocuments in an easy-to-maintain site.

"Creating a team web site has always been too complicated, requiringdedicated hardware and software as well as programming skills," saidDave Girouard, general manager of Google’s Enterprise unit, which isaimed at office workers.

Google Sites is a stripped-down version of Microsoft’s SharePointcollaboration software, which lets users inside an organization sharedocuments and maintain calendars on secure Web sites, but is far morecomplex to set up and maintain.

Unlike SharePoint, which typically requires organizations to buy andmaintain their own hardware and software at costs that can run fromtens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to serve one hundred users,Google Sites is hosted on Google computers and is free to users ofGoogle Apps, which the company offers at a fraction of the cost ofMicrosoft tools.

"We think this is SharePoint-like, but better," Girouard said in an interview.

Basic sites are free or carry a small monthly per-user fee,depending on whether organizations have purchased fuller-featuredversions of Google Apps that allow for centralized technical management.

Google Sites puts control of Web sites into the hands of regularoffice workers rather than an organization’s network administrators ortechnical support desk, Girouard said.

"The idea is that IT (Information Technology departments) don’t haveto do anything except enable users to serve themselves," the Googleexecutive said.

Google Sites enables any user invited to join a site to edit pageswithout requiring knowledge of Web coding or design. Any informationpublished to the site is searchable by visitors with permission to usethe site, the company said.

The site publishing framework lets office workers create "intranets"– centralized archives of company information that can only be viewedwithin an organization rather than on the public Web. Such sites can beused to manage team projects.

Individual teams members can also create profile pages of theiractivities, interests and schedules. In school settings, Google Sitescan function as virtual classrooms for posting homework assignments,class notes or other student resources.

Girouard said he considered Google Sites the biggest new productintroduction in a steady stream of innovations since his companyintroduced Google Apps only a year ago this month.

Google Apps offers a suite of word-processing, spreadsheet andpresentation software that let groups of users edit and view documentsover the Web, together with e-mail and basic personal Web sitepublishing tools.

Over the past year, Google said more than 500,000 businesses andseveral thousand schools and universities have adopted Google Apps.

"Google Sites is relatively easy to use and free," said RebeccaWettemann, an analyst with technical consulting firm Nucleus Researchof Wellesley, Massachusetts. "Google is making people think differentlyabout how businesses use the Web."

But Wettemannn said Google’s Web site publishing framework so farlacks management features that let organizations control the unbridledproliferation of poorly maintained or out-of-date Web sites that canoccur when such tools are let loose.

"Just because it is easy to use and intuitive doesn’t mean usersdon’t have to sit down and think about the business problems they aretrying to solve," she said.

(Editing by Kim Coghill)

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