Websites made easy with Google Pages

Google is getting into the homepages bandwagon. But is it a decade too late? If you remember the Geocities and Tripod homepage builder services popular in the mid to late-1990’s, then you’re in for a trip to memory lane. Recall that Yahoo! has since acquired Geocities before the turn of the century, integrating the service with most of My Yahoo! offerings, and homepages have become a thing of the past, with the popularity of blogging solutions and cheap webhosting.

Google seems to be in competition with Yahoo! in all aspects of its business, and the free homepage space is one that Google seems to want a bite at. So the company has recently launched Google Pages, its own free hosting and web-building service. The feature is initially available for “beta testing” to a few Gmail-account holders, and you would have to request for your account to be included in the testing stage before you can use the service.

So what does Google Pages have that other site building services do not have. Well, for one, it’s a Google service, and one can expect good integration with other Google offerings such as Gmail and Google Personalized homepages. Another is ease-of-use. We know that Google’s own search page is clean and clutter-free. So we could also expect Google Pages’ website builder to be the same.

So how does Google Pages fare? Well, if you’re interested, try to apply for a beta test account, and to do this, you need only go to http://pages.google.com and key in your Gmail account username and password (if not already logged in). You would then have to wait a couple of weeks for the account to be approved. We got our approval just about that time. And we thought Google Pages was all right—it’s not too impressive, as it’s simple and straightforward enough for a beginner to use, but also with some advanced features that techies would appreciate.

Google Pages initially gets you a (your Gmail login name).googlepages.com homepage which you can build using a WYSIWYG interface. And there are a good number of pre-designed templates to choose from. So it’s as simple as typing in a document using a word processor and Google will take care of the formatting aspects. The interface is AJAX-based, so there’s no need to refresh your browser window everytime you make a change or want to save—Google Pages actually saves your document in draft automatically until you click the “publish” button.

We will go in-depth with Google Pages next time.