Google acquired hosted wiki service Jotspot in October 2006. The service immediately stopped taking new users, although existing users were supported. Now, nearly sixteen months later, Jotspot has been relaunched under the Google Apps team, as Google Sites.
Google Sites looks absolutely nothing like Jotspot, other than the fact that both are hosted wikis. All of the structured data templates launched by Jotspot in July 2006 have been stripped out. Users now have a choice between just five basic templates - a standard wiki, a dashboard where google gadgets can be embedded, a blog-like template for announcements, a file cabinet for file uploads, and a page for lists of items. Instead of creating structured templates, users will now simply embed spreadsheets, presentations and word documents from Google Docs, as well as Google Calendars, YouTube Videos and Picasa Albums.
Like Google Docs, Google Sites wikis can be made private, shared with others, or made public. Users can select from a variety of templates, but cannot yet customize the look and feel of the site. Somewhere down the road, Google says, they’ll release an API for the new service as well. Editing is done with a rich text editor that allows for basic formatting.
Google Sites is a free product, with limitations on support and storage (10 GB). Users can upgrade their Google Apps account to a standard edition, also free, and map their own domains to the site. A premier edition is also available for $50/user/year that includes a service level agreement, support and more admin capabilities.
All wiki pages have RSS feeds associated with them to allow users to track any changes.
Existing Jotspot users will continue to be supported on the old platform for the near future, and they will also be given instructions for porting their Jotspot wikis to Google sites.
In an interview today, Google’s Management Director of Enterprise Matthew Glotzbach called the combined products under Google Apps a “Microsoft Sharepoint killer” because it’s allowing businesses to collaborate without all that expensive Microsoft software. It may not be a Sharepoint killer yet, but Google Apps constitutes 2-3% of Google’s total revenues. Some point soon, its going to start hurting Microsoft.
Sample screenshots:
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http://sites.google.com/ is 404ing
Ah, there’s a product release. I was beginning to think that Google was on vacation.
Its not live yet
>Google Apps constitutes 2-3% of Google’s total revenues.
Hmm, interesting, and seemingly lot of future for this cloud computing stuff..
This isn’t a SharePoint kiler…it’s a Basecamp killer…
Looks like a complete re-write of JotSpot. Makes you wonder why Google bought them in the first place. Maybe it was just for the Engineering talent?
>>2
rofl
What does this mean for PBwiki?
sites now live
My company used Jotspot but finally had to abandon it after Google bought them and pretty much offered no customer support. The site was filled with bugs and nobody was responding to customer support emails. I talked to one of the former sales reps for Jotspot (who now works for Google) last August and he hinted that Google would start releasing Jot functionality in Q4 of last year. It never happened. I hope this product was worth the wait because I can tell you from speaking with many other former Jotspot users, they are essentially starting from close to square one.
And no, I’m not a Google hater, but certainly was frustrated by their lack of support and news on Jotspot over the past 16 months.
Is Hulu down? Can’t get it to work.
It seems like a better version of their GooglePages project. GooglePages hasn’t “graduated” yet. I wonder if they will continue to run both?
Wow…about time. I thought “Jotspot” was dead.
I actually got in two days before Google made the acquisition and then locked-out new users. Their support was absolutely dismal. I essentially quit using it and basically waited for SharePoint 2007.
“It may not be a Sharepoint killer yet,”
- I agree with the statement…it has a way to go before it’s comparable to MOSS 2007 but everything starts with “1.0″.
I stand corrected.
Foolish as I am I thought buying Jotspot and waiting 16 months to re-offer it to customers was the dumbest thing Google could do. It never occured to me they could make the act even worse by rewriting the product in a way that made it inferior. Bravo Google!
In all seriousness it is a testament to JotSpot that even 16 months later it would have been ahead of the wiki curve. Version 2.0 was amazing and a lot of that had to do with the templates. When Google shut it off to new users I assumed they were just making those templates compatible with other Google services such as Google Docs and Calendar. I can’t for the life of me understand why they’d cut them out all together.
The sad part about all of this is that Jotspot 2.0 really might have been a Sharepoint-Killer. But I guess now we’ll never know.
Cannot yet access the service from my existing Google Apps account. Maybe by morning. Been waiting on this one, thanks for the update!
The rewrite was probably necessary because it’s always possible JotSpot’s code did not scale to Google proportions.
Here are four reasons why Google Sites > JotSpot:
1. Performance and Stability: enough said..
2. Access to best of breed online office applications: JotSpot was starting to build out their spreadsheet but it was slow and needed alot of help.
3. Access to thousands of applications immediately with the integration of Google home page widgets (many of which are apps in their own right).
4. Improved searching capabilities: enough said..
Overall, I think it’s great and give it a few months and see what people do with it. The API is when this will get really fun…
Google Apps customer here too and also been waiting for this..rewrite or not, give me a wiki!
I guess it looks like this will only be for Google Apps users, instead of integrating with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. It’s a shame, because a wiki service would go great with there current focus on collaboration and communication.
As it stands, It seams unlikely that this will ever get a large number of users, especially considering you have to purchase a domain to use it. I would love to see Google supply a subdomain, similar to gmail.com, so this app can catch on.
Be that as it is, I can’t wait to check my Google Apps account tomorrow to check it out. Google’s been… stagnant… lately.
Mike - the site is currently live at google.com/sites but sites.google.com returns a 404.
And here’s a video demo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KnC2EIS5w
Wow, a Sharepoint killer..don’t stop reaching for the stars, Google.
>Some point soon, its going to start hurting Microsoft.
How soon exactly? You do know that MS dollar share of productivity apps has gone up over the last year right? Seems like decent start but there are many miles to go before dawn. I don’t know why they would be stupid enough to call this a “killer” of anything just yet but for the fact that folks like you buy it with apparently no critical thought whatsoever.
Somebody’s got stick-to-it-iveness!
Dear MA
Pls cover Sitemaps cross submission story
Thanks
Tech Bytes
W
Sites wont show up in a google apps account until google pages is removed for some reason. Once pages is removed, apps offers the option to add both sites and pages.
This looks awfully similiar to google pages, just more data driven and widget friendly. However, at the business logic and database layer there is usually a much higher level of complexity that a programmer is needed to solve. This works for “my homepage” but I can’t see it working for “my company portal”. Even Sharepoint sites need a Sharepoint programmer for complex database classes. With Sharepoint you have the flexibility because you can code it. I doubt an abstract layered remote site can have the functionality required by most major company portals. Looks better than google pages though.
Brian B
Creator of RideSearch.com
“Carpool for a Better Tomorrow”
@dann - google pages seems to be more of a personal webpage type thing. this is for corporate/group type sites. i imagine they will continue to run them as separate services, although i’m sure there will be plenty of crossover.
@michael - how does docs make so much money? is it just the charge for the prem. accounts, or is there some other source of revenue in online office apps that i’m not seeing? there doesn’t seem to be any advertising.
Since I’m an investor in and executive at PBwiki, I thought it would be worthwhile to give you some of our thoughts and reactions. The usual caveats about potential biases apply!
BA asked, “What does this mean for PBwiki?” I think that there are positives and negatives.
The negative, of course, is that Google is now offering wiki functionality, and will probably offer it for free. PBwiki offers a great free product, but makes money by selling an upgraded version.
While Google could be a formidable competitor, it’s important to remember that the principle competition for PBwiki’s paid product is PBwiki’s unpaid product, and we’re doing pretty well there.
We’re also bringing out PBwiki 2.0 this month, and it will have a ton of functionality that Google Sites doesn’t. We’ve added features that our users (over 450,000 wikis hosted, thousands of paying customers including Facebook, Symantec, DePaul University, and the FDA) told us they needed to better collaborate within large organizations on mission-critical processes. These include things like page- and folder-level access controls so that you can specify the exact users who can view or edit a page.
The optimist in me says that by bringing a ton of attention to the space, Google will validate the space and help drive additional business for PBwiki.
For example, when Justin.tv launched, we launched Ustream right afterwards to take advantage of the fact that they weren’t giving folks the ability to broadcast themselves. That worked out pretty well for Ustream.
In the case of Google Sites, as Grant noted, it’s limited to Google Apps users…my guess is that very few of PBwiki’s current customers use Google Apps, so there isn’t going to be much if any cannibalization.
In terms of the bigger SharePoint question that Doug, Tom, and The Hater alluded to, I do think that Google will play an important role in the battle between on-premise and on-demand collaboration software.
Even if Google Sites doesn’t light the world on fire, just having Google put a stake in the ground will help some corporate IT types realize that SaaS is a good thing, and will make their jobs easier.
As Danny mentioned, SharePoint is growing right now. Microsoft said that SharePoint was an $800 million business for them. Even though the product isn’t exactly beloved by many of its end users, or the IT departments that have to support user-developed SharePoint sites, it is widely used, and it does have Microsoft’s muscle behind it.
And as Brian Bass wrote, SharePoint is extremely customizable…it will be a while before Google Sites is a direct competitor for those uses.
Still, our experience at PBwiki is that we win a strong majority of our bakeoffs with SharePoint, thanks to ease-of-use, lower TCO (no servers or admins needed!), and the ability to serve collaborators on different networks and even those outside the company. And since Symantec has signed off on PBwiki’s security, you know it’s probably good enough for just about anyone.
So net net, our feeling is that having Google validate the space without having the ability to poach our preferred customers is a good thing for PBwiki. Since we’re the market leader in business and education, we should benefit disproportionately from an expansion in the market. Having Google as a competitor certainly doesn’t seem to have badly hurt the likes of Omniture and WordPress/Automattic. And Google will provide a valuable ally in the bigger battle against Microsoft SharePoint and on-premise collaboration tools.
can’t sign up… with my gmail account ROFL! It’s collaboration only and you need a school or business email. *Total Anti climax* I wanted to check it out. If I can’t check it out I can’t recommend it dûh! Any other similar products worth mentioning?
Has anyone been able to access this?
Under “Manage Domain” I could add “Sites” as a new service, but don’t know how to access it. It does not show as a clickable service under “More”, and when I type sites.google.com it wants me to sign up for Google Apps even though I am logged in to my account. Of course doing so results in the error message:
Google Apps for ….has already been registered by your domain administrator. Please contact your admin directly to get access to Google Apps services.
Catch 22.
“If I can’t check it out I can’t recommend it dûh! Any other similar products worth mentioning?”
DC–I can’t let a straight line like that go by. Check out PBwiki: http://www.pbwiki.com.
Zoli, if you need help getting access, let me know.
Haha, Chris, that’s cute… I don’t have a problem accessing pbwiki, but I really wanted to check out Google Sites, especially since it appears to do what I predicted last year.
Is working, I created a test site:
http://sites.google.com/a/juli...../test/Home
I wonder how long it would take them to redirect JulioFernandez.US ? The site used to be hosted by Yahoo… one more place where Yahoo will not get my $. I used to pay for Yahoo’s email service too… until Gmail.
Hey Zoli,
No, actually I’ve already managed to sign up for Google Sites. I have my ways….
Chris the Magician:-) Show me the way, please!
If google ever dies, it will be because of “minimalism”!
Wow! I enter my gmail id on Google Sites and it says “Please enter a valid email id.” Duh!
Has anyone notice the relaunch of gigablast ? It’s kinda strange these folks are no having any press coverage. they have added some more services.
here’s the address : http://www.gigablast.com
“Existing Jotspot users will continue to be supported on the old platform for the near future, and they will also be given instructions for porting their Jotspot wikis to Google sites.”
Yeah right, after another 16 months?
I came across Google Sites just as I was wondering how to create an extranet site for some folks working with Redfin.
This site is beautiful and powerful but there are a few problems:
1. The security is complicated; since many of the prompts are focused on users within a domain, consumers may struggle with how to share their site with users outside of that domain.
2. The text editor does not seem to allow a Safari 3.0.4 user to save changes once he has added an image to the page.
3. Uploaded images save, but then seem to disappear when you log out of the site and then log back in.
4. Placement of CustomRSS gadgets is buggy; settings for background colors don’t save, and the preview mode displays a distorted, offset view of the gadget . A CustomRSS feed based on del.icio.us didn’t display the RSS feed.
5. The system for inviting users is glitchy. Users I have removed seem to re-appear.
All of this may be due to user error; I was trying to work fast…
Chris, this is definitely a validation on the market and PBwiki & Socialtext will also benefit from the expansion.
The WordPress/Automattic reference makes me wonder if going open source will be a viable option to stay ahead in functionality when compared with Google Apps.
Pretty cool. I like how the links still point to the same pages even if you change the directory structure or page name. Although I would like template functionality and better access to add JS libraries (and their corresponding UI widgets) to this. I imagine in a v2, google could even offer a way to link to a DB….so I give it thumbs as a nice start.
Looks like an absolute rip of Live Sites by Microsoft.
No doubt this will be hailed as an amazing innovation, credit were it ain’t due.
Are you sure that this is the new “Jotspot”?
It seems to me an improved version of Google Pages. What has happened to all those (more advanced) functions inside the old Jotspot? http://www.jot.com/gallery
I was just wondering what happened to Jot - it took them a very long time to come out with this.
I really hope we can use this in our company and avoid the Sharepoint stuff. Jot was always a very good Wiki from a usability standpoint.
It is great to know that finally jot is back.
is there anything left that Google hasn’t started doing yet?
Thank god their Google Groups product sucks, giving way for modern community building/hosting like Forumer to keep growing.
All this hype over a simple wiki? Don’t get me wrong, i love Wiki’s, but what about that staid and overprotected market of Enterprise Content Management within the enterprise? I’m talking about multi-million dollar vendors with yesterday’s technology offering, and the fact they are only viable because they’re charging $500K per annum in maintenance fees. Where are tomorrow’s ECM vendors?
I try to access Google Sites here from Switzerland, but unfortunately I end up on the Google Earth Sightseeing page
WOW GOOGLE!