In: Technology
29 Feb 2008
I would have to say that Microsoft SharePoint could be considered the foundation of the product I work on at Microsoft, PerformancePoint Server 2007.
That being the case, I try to keep myself very aware of what’s going on in that space. Last night I got an email from Google advertising a new service that was available to me as a Google Apps customer. The Announcement read…
Greetings admins!
Today, we’re excited to announce the introduction of Google Sites as part of Google Apps.
Google Sites makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. You can quickly gather a variety of information in one place — including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and gadgets — and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, your entire organization, or the world.
As of today, Google Sites is enabled for philoking.com, which means your users can get started immediately. To help you announce this new offering to your users, we’ve included a template message below that you’re welcome to use.
It didn’t take long to realize that sounded a whole lot like SharePoint. Now Google has already been trying to take on Microsoft Office with cloud services like Google Docs, and to be honest it’s a pretty impressive product given the complexity of having an entirely web based spreadsheet solution.
So what does this new service offer exactly? Well I took some time to play with it and some of the highlights are as follows…
Google has 5 page types for your sites:
The site itself is quite customizable, and in cases of cross geo teams who need to collaborate, even with actual Office documents, I can see it as a real competitor. The place it falls short, which is the majority of SharePoint installs in my opinion, is extensability.
There appears to be no actual API, no way to access web services to extend it with additional functionality and most importantly no way to use it as a data source for any other tools or products. I am sure that this is clearly on the Radar as this is only a beta and will probably continue to grow.
I did see a few performance issues and when testing it with Google Docs integration I saw some problems with formatting spreadsheets, especially with charts into your pages.
The bottom line is that this is one impressive piece of web coding. Cross browser it’s beautiful, the feature set is incredibly rich for a free product. The question I ask is:
How many are going to trust Google and “the cloud” with their data 100%. If you place your life in a site and it dies, the service is discontinued or whatever disaster you can dream up, having no access to the data and no traditional way to back it up or export it to another tool, that’s a pretty scary proposition.
If you would like to view my test site, you can access it here http://sites.google.com/a/philoking.com/testsite/lkists
If you would like to play with it, send me your Google ID and I will set you up access to modify it.
My co-worker found a scary little footnote:
Content you create with Google Sites may, if you choose, be read, copied, used and redistributed by people you know or, again if you choose, by people you do not know. Use care when including sensitive personal information in content you share, such as social security numbers, financial account information, home addresses or phone numbers.

Jason Burns is a technology enthusiast, Microsoft guy, photographer, musician and all around geek. This blog is the general rambling one, check out the links for the specific ones!
8 Responses to Google announces Sites – Google SharePoint?
Review of Google Sites « Randy Holloway Unfiltered
March 1st, 2008 at 10:44 am
[...] of Google Sites Jump to Comments Here’s an interesting review of Google Sites- a clear SharePoint competitor. The “Office” wars will be won through online [...]
Soli
March 2nd, 2008 at 4:52 am
I don’t really dig most of Google’s services because they are sometimes defective, but I use them anyway because they are free. If I had the money, I’d prefer Microsoft products anyday.
Google Sites: Collaboration from Google | Womenhealth
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 am
[...] review of Google Sites with more in depth discussion of the features. Business Week, VentureBeat and others cover the [...]
rolf
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:17 am
i would like to play with the site a bit
please take comment email
thanks
Element Circle - Free Will Astrology: March 25 through April 1 (The Village Voice) | Juvenile Literature
April 5th, 2008 at 11:24 am
[...] review of Google Sites with more in depth discussion of the features. Business Week, VentureBeat and others cover the [...]
Google Sites: Collaboration from Google | iChat Health
May 18th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
[...] review of Google Sites with more in depth discussion of the features. Business Week, VentureBeat and others cover the [...]
Maria Smeets
December 5th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I”m a beginner and I’ve many many problems with Google Sites…! My Local History Club (Heemkundekring Tilburg, in Holland) wants a (free) searchable website with address: http://www.heemkumdekringtilburg.nl, but all I can “offer” is http://sites.google.com/site/heemkundekringtilburg/ I did not manage to verify. Even starting again by removal of the site is not possible, because the warning comes:”you cannot build the same site on the same location”.
You may have any advice for me? I would be very happy!
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PHILO KANYAU
January 12th, 2010 at 4:51 am
don’t worry something is being done