Comments on: Google Pages launched

Google Pages launched

mathowie — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:31:40 -0800

Google Pages is basically Geocities 2.0. You get a wysiwyg editing interface, a bunch of templates to pick from, and the ability to make as many pages as you need. Time will tell if this revolutionizes the web the way Geocities did (aside from all the obvious crappy pages from Geocities, it did give thousands of new writers and designers a place to start), but it's certainly a cool set of tools to do something mundane like start a website. [via waxy]

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:32:44 -0800

My first attempt (copied and pasted a bit from The Smoking Gun's weekly email). I'd love to see an open source clone, maybe done in PHP. Something I could upload to my own server and use to edit a few static non-weblog pages that i have lying around.

By: thanatogenous

thanatogenous — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:37:41 -0800

hopefully it has support for "spinning under construction gif 2.0" and "metallica midi 2.0". Your site comes up as a 404 to me, matt. I'll have to give this a shot.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:41:38 -0800

Post an example that works, someone, if you get it to not 404. I'm curious. Although really, it seems like Google ... doesn't need to get into this business.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:45:27 -0800

The Make magazine blog has an example with a screenshot of the process.

By: thanatogenous

thanatogenous — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:48:34 -0800

it seems like Google ... doesn't need to get into this business. This actually seems like the type of thing that google would definitely do. They appear to be getting their feet wet with all sorts of ideas and see which ones stick. I kinda wish Google would do a sleeker, more conservative sort of myspace thing. The current "myspace" and "friendster" just appear chaotic to me, but I like the idea.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:52:54 -0800

By: charmston

charmston — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:54:13 -0800

I tried making a page, and the link they gave me 404-ed as well.

By: TwelveTwo

TwelveTwo — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:55:38 -0800

Anyone else suddenly get flooded with memories of editing their aol.members homepage?

By: TwelveTwo

TwelveTwo — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:56:05 -0800

or was it members.aol, oh memory is a fickle thing.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:57:07 -0800

It's weird, if I sit and refresh my google page, it eventually comes up. I assume their caching servers aren't quite up to speed yet.

By: thanatogenous

thanatogenous — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:01:54 -0800

Sweet, I see it now. Yeah... geocities 2.0. I'll have to mess with it when I wake up in the morning.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:03:52 -0800

It must be a powerful feeling to be a guy at Google. I think this was launched about an hour ago. My comment about them not needing to get into it -- I thought they wanted to organize the world's information, not make it easier for people to host crappy little templated bad websites. But, I dunno. I suppose they know what they're doing. I'm just looking forward to the Google Space Elevator.

By: First Post

First Post — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:14:29 -0800

The fact that MySpace is so unredeemably hideous and cumbersome yet so unfathomably and spectacularly popular makes me worry much more about today's youth then any alleged underage drinking and nudie pics. Myspace is almost like a flashback to ten years ago (back when Geocities was still Beverly Hills Internet), with the "pimped out" backgrounds and embedded music and whatnot. Certainly as loquacious alludes to above, the interface itself is problematic. Yet everyone goes there because that's where everybody is. Funny how that works. I'm surprised Google wasn't doing this already. There is always a need for something basic in web publishing. For exaple, somebody posted this link in another thread, and like others I've been reading all the fascinating stories there. The design is obviously some generic template thing, but the content is what's important, and this cat recorded a lot of stuff that normally would have been lost forever, as oral history tends to do. No need to learn Dreamweaver or Frontpage or whatever, really.

By: JakeEXTREME

JakeEXTREME — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:15:03 -0800

"But, I dunno. I suppose they know what they're doing." I was going to say that it's about the advertising money yet I don't see any ads on the page I created nor on Matts.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:36:21 -0800

I suppose they know what they're doing. I doubt it. A more likely explanation is that they have an excess of talented geeks. I'm not crazy about this project; they way they let you choose exactly what font, font size, font style, etc. you want for every character of text reminds me of the worst days of web 1.0. Google's scattershot approach to product development is starting to worry me. They have good geeks, so projects like this probably cost very little to produce, but its becoming more and more obvious that the Master Plan that the world (and the stock market) wants them to have simply doesn't exist. Their plan now seems to be to do great search, and use the profits to launch hundreds of experiments like this in the hope that something will stick. Unfortunately, other than GMail (and to a lessers extent, Maps), nothing is sticking. Even GMail has been successful only because they're offering tons of disk space, which is cheap now, but will inevitably become much more expensive 10 years down the road, when everyone has multiple gigabytes of archives (it probably already is becoming more expensive... notice the recent addition of a "Delete" button to the main interface). Every time I see them release a mediocre project like this, or Base, or Reader, or Ride Finder, or Froogle, I become more pessimistic about their staying power.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:46:22 -0800

From the list, they've got about 20 projects, total. It is getting kind of ridiculous. Google Transit is crap, no one actually uses Suggest, I fainly remember Google Sets but, uh.. yeah..,

By: epugachev

epugachev — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:48:00 -0800

it probably already is becoming more expensive... notice the recent addition of a "Delete" button to the main interface I don't think this implies that they were running out of disk space--rather, I believe they said somewhere when the delete button was introduced that it was "by popular demand." I for one requested it at one point via their feature request form because I saw no reason to archive most of the stuff I get via gmail and didn't like navigating through the drop-down menu every time I wanted to delete something. I guess the conspiracy theory was that they wanted us to save all our email so they could get as complete a database for selecting personalized ads as possible.

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:15:59 -0800

It can see that this might be quite handy, but where do they get revenue from?

By: sebas

sebas — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:18:12 -0800

It is quite handy, but I'm kinda missing a link to Blogger. This would be great if you could somehow mix static pages and blog entries in one location.

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:22:02 -0800

agreed about Blogger sebas, I would have thought they also might have an easy way of including ads, which is the obvious revenue stream, (the reasoning behind gmail), but then are these pages the kind of thing that would generate enough traffic?

By: HuronBob

HuronBob — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:28:10 -0800

I've said it once, I'll said it again... Google is God. And don't you forget it!

By: sebas

sebas — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:42:15 -0800

I wonder how fast Google picks up the content in it's search engine. I have made a page containing the word smurtwuffle and wonder if Metafilter or my new homepage will be picked up sooner.

By: acetonic

acetonic — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:43:51 -0800

I never did get around to getting a gmail acct so I can't play with this one.

By: punilux

punilux — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:51:53 -0800

acetonic : Looks like there are gmail signups available from the front page.

By: gsb

gsb — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:51:54 -0800

This has a very "Pop Will Eat Itself" feel to it. Google releases a web application for creating webpages that are then indexed, cached and used by the Googlebots for further algorithmic regression leading to even more populating of my Google search by pages created by a Google web application, that allows one to create a webpage that is indexed, cached and used by the Googlebots. And that's not counting in the reciprocal linking between pages, a la Blogger. Nice job overall, though.

By: redteam

redteam — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:55:31 -0800

Google already owns a Social Networking site, thanatogenous. It's called Orkut. I hear that it's super popular in Brazil. I also see that it's still invitation only. Anyone wanna invite me in there so I can check it out?

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:55:48 -0800

Yeah, if only there were a gmailmenot. Are there still G-invites drifting, increasingly unfashionable, through MeFi?

By: sophist

sophist — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:10:38 -0800

I remember reading somewhere that all Google employees are allowed to use 20% of their time on independant projects. Doesn't have to lead anywhere, can be pie-in-the sky brainstorming sessions, new features, personal inventions, crazy hacks, whatever. Considering they have so many brilliant people working there, it is a great idea, and undoubtedly where many of their new projects are coming from.

By: lemonfridge

lemonfridge — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:11:03 -0800

yay for mine!

By: lemonfridge

lemonfridge — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:18:04 -0800

I think it 404's briefly after publishing (or editing), but appears shortly after.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:45:53 -0800

"The fact that MySpace is so unredeemably hideous and cumbersome yet so unfathomably and spectacularly popular makes me worry much more about today's youth then any alleged underage drinking and nudie pics." From time to time I consider taking up MySpace. The consideration usually goes something like this: Pros: Could possibly help me get laid. Cons: Not sure I want to get laid by people who use animated gif backgrounds, marquee tags, and embedded midi. I mean, there's things at MySpace such that, until I saw them there, I had been blissfully unaware that web browsers could display such horror.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:59:35 -0800

blacklite: "From the list, they've got about 20 projects, total. It is getting kind of ridiculous. Google Transit is crap, no one actually uses Suggest, I fainly remember Google Sets but, uh.. yeah..," Most of my best work came from just doing shit and making it public. Why should they take down little lab one-offs if they aren't 100% awesomely amazing? I'm certain that the feedback they get is worth the negligible costs of keeping Google Sets up. (BTW, Transit is only crap because you live 170 miles from Portland, I have several co-workers that have Suggest as their home page, and I use Sets on (at least) a weekly basis. Unuseful-for-you doesn't equal crap.)

By: hnnrs

hnnrs — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:10:05 -0800

The thing that's alwyas marked google above the competition is the sheer simplicity of its interfaces, and this is no exception.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:11:03 -0800

(BTW, Transit is only crap because you live 170 miles from Portland, I have several co-workers that have Suggest as their home page, and I use Sets on (at least) a weekly basis. Unuseful-for-you doesn't equal crap.) Transit's a bit of a sore spot for me, because I was working on, basically, exactly that, until Google came along and released Transit and then we sort of ended up shutting down. It seems to be missing some nice features, and not be completely accurate -- although I admit this is all based on my initial impressions from December. I didn't actually realize anyone used Suggest that much, though. (I do talk to other people, it isn't all based on personal preference.) I did not realize anyone had ever used Sets for anything other than 'huh, cute'. Good to know, though. What do you use Sets for?

By: effwerd

effwerd — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:13:10 -0800

You need a mobile phone to sign up for gmail? WTF?

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:17:11 -0800

blacklite just fed me, headfirst, into the GMachine and then 1) it didn't like my browser 2) this is just AJAX PowerPoint, isn't it? But without the irritating swooshes - I assume they'll be added shortly. 3) I was working on something very similar to this project last year, but I gave up as someone else was bound to have done it better. Clearly I should pick up the keyboard again.

By: brownpau

brownpau — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:57:15 -0800

Timeouts all over the place and drag-and-drop WYSIWYG page editing generating crufty HTML tag soup with FONT elements... it was so wonderful it brought a tear to my eye. Seriously, it's going to be so great. COME SEE MY HOME PAGE ON THE WEB NOW!

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:35:16 -0800

Strict XHTML to keep up with all teh h0t bl0grr k1d5, I see. I hope Google's underemployed free-thinkers aren't the future of the web.

By: carter

carter — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:53:25 -0800

Seems cool to me. You don't *have* to use it, and I guess most the people who do use it will be happy with it. I'd be happier with being able to put plain ol html in right at the beginning - then you'd have 100mb of hosting.

By: brownpau

brownpau — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:11:22 -0800

Now it's down with 404s and a "Google Page Creator is having a little trouble right now" error. That's some quality hosting right there. You know what would be great? In Settings, a little text input checkbox and text input field: "Check here if you have a domain. Enter your domain name. Your nameservers are ns1.googlepages.com and ns2.googlepages.com. Enjoy!"

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:16:05 -0800

You need a mobile phone to sign up for gmail? WTF? They REALLY want to prevent spammers from signing up tons of accounts.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:23:14 -0800

Are they ever going to do anything with calendar? There was a big brouhaha about it when the subdomain became active, and then nothing ever happened with it.

By: evoo

evoo — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:27:18 -0800

Sorry, your web browser is not yet supported. Our programming wizards tried their darndest to get Google Page Creator to work with as many browsers as possible. But alas, even the most expert practitioners of web sorcery must sleep now and again, lest their JavaScript magic run dry. Not working on Safari.

By: Mick

Mick — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:33:13 -0800

I've been playing with it and it's rough right now but I see some great potential. - I'd love them to integrate google suggest into the html edit view so it had a code tip/autocomplte function like homesite. - Allow developers to upload locked templates for clients and then let clients use google pages as the crm - Allow upload to third party servers

By: MiguelCardoso

MiguelCardoso — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:35:33 -0800

And yet it just about works on Camino...

By: VulcanMike

VulcanMike — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:46:13 -0800

First Post wrote "Myspace is almost like a flashback to ten years ago (back when Geocities was still Beverly Hills Internet), with the 'pimped out' backgrounds and embedded music and whatnot. It may be Web 2.0 for us, but it's always going to be Web Pre-Alpha for the kids.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:48:31 -0800

I wonder if this is the start of the much-rumored Google software rollout, designed to compete directly with MS Office? First they pick off Frontpage, the weak member of the pack, then go after the rest of the office suite. [Miguel! You back or just taunting us with a whiff of cigars and port?]

By: selfnoise

selfnoise — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:49:17 -0800

Anyone else getting this problem where their page is always "locked by another user" and then Google freaks out when you try to "break the lock"? Guess I won't be using this for the moment.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:51:01 -0800

"My first attempt (copied and pasted a bit from The Smoking Gun's weekly email)." OMG haxxor3d

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:51:52 -0800

I could swear I just had a Migs sighting. *fans self*

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:51:54 -0800

PowerPoint via AJAX - pretty good description. But as noted above, what sets it apart is (a) it is pretty damn simple to use, and (b) it's GOOGLE, dammit. Critics be damned, Google continues to delight me.

By: mr.marx

mr.marx — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:56:29 -0800

And yet it just about works on Camino... posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:35 PM CET on February 23 [!] !!!

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:02:43 -0800

MIGUEL! Guess I've got to get drunk now. Then I'll create a googlepage. This oughtta be good!

By: hangashore

hangashore — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:10:40 -0800

Well, a relief to see that the cats are unharmed (no sign either way of spilled martinis...). Oops - back to the Googlecities thread.

By: hank

hank — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:11:35 -0800

So this 'Delete' button Google offers -- Is it safe to assume that it just hides the item from you but leaves it usable for their data mining and correlation service? Otherwise they'd be deleting possibly vital evidence, if it turns out later that you're a terrorist, right?

By: drezdn

drezdn — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:17:07 -0800

OMG!!!! It's like a general on the battlefield, or an angel walking among us!!!!! OMG!!!! < ! i wonder if commenting works in posts aardvark>

By: drezdn

drezdn — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:17:25 -0800

Oops

By: amberglow

amberglow — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:41:27 -0800

Miguel! : > This is great--anything that makes the process easier. I've also become a fan of Magnoto--very easy, cute fridge-door type posting.

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:46:59 -0800

hey Miguel, you're needed in a thread about Henry Jame's testicles.

By: jeffmik

jeffmik — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:49:18 -0800

I now have a strong urge to listen to Nirvana and wear an old flannel jacket for the rest of the day.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:49:38 -0800

Wow, Google Pages brought Migs out of lurker/hiding mode! SUCK IT, GOOGLE H8TRZ! Part of me loves the increasing ease of use of web tools, but they never seem to lead to better web pages, just a higher volume of bad ones. BTW, I think Google's plan is to place Google Ads on these pages based on content.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:02:46 -0800

Thank you for your interest in Google Page Creator! Google Page Creator has experienced extremely strong demand, and, as a result, we have temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. In the meantime, please submit your email address and we will notify you as soon as we are ready to add new accounts. Thank you for your patience.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:05:29 -0800

I kinda wish Google would do a sleeker, more conservative sort of myspace thing. The current "myspace" and "friendster" just appear chaotic to me, but I like the idea. They have a thing called "Orkut" which was done by an employee in his 'personal development' time, but it was taken over by BRAZILLIANS. Other then that, though, it totaly sucks.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:16:27 -0800

At some point Google should stop being surprised at the demand for their new services.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:58:56 -0800

Amber: Thanks for the link to Magnoto, that is really cool!

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:10:36 -0800

wtf? someone hacked my page? How the hell did that happen?

By: Freen

Freen — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:12:20 -0800

This has been done quite a while ago by Piczo.com. Though as usual, google's implementation seems a bit slicker.

By: carter

carter — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:14:42 -0800

wtf? someone hacked my page? Heh - I didn't know that it had wiki functionality.

By: carter

carter — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:18:08 -0800

How the hell did that happen? Obvious password to your gmail a/c?

By: brettski

brettski — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:55:26 -0800

wtf? someone hacked my page? Not the most auspicious start then....

By: brownpau

brownpau — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 10:01:39 -0800

For a brief time this morning, I was able to change anyone's Googlepage simply by changing the username in the page edit URL. I sent a bug report, and they seem to have fixed it now.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 10:19:36 -0800

Matt! brownpau did it!

By: WetherMan

WetherMan — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 10:20:49 -0800

All you guys ragging on myspace should remember that it's not the only social site out there, Facebook is very popular at many schools and that interface is clean and refreshing... like pepsi blue.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 10:39:50 -0800

People choose ugly page designs when given the choice. They're blind or something. I don't know if you can blame that on myspace. Look at a random LJ and you'll see the same hideousness.

By: S.C.

S.C. — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:06:28 -0800

delmoi - How many is a brazillion?

By: scarabic

scarabic — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:24:02 -0800

wtf? someone hacked my page? How the hell did that happen? Welcome to my homepage! I kiss you! Someone put up a pic of mathowie in a speedo.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:25:44 -0800

Great FPP Matt. Thank you. :) There's also Bravehost's free webpage maker. First Post, I forwarded the link to this thread to Bill Gann, the author of the site whose content you said had fascinating stories and oral histories and he was so pleased as a result he decided to join MetaFilter. :) Freen, thanks for the useful link to Piczo. I liked their demo page.

By: Drexen

Drexen — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:03:59 -0800

~~I, for one, welcome our new Miguel Cardoso overlord.~~

By: gsteff

gsteff — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:15:54 -0800

And yet it just about works on Camino... Eight words. From Miguel. Now you're just teasing us.

By: uni verse

uni verse — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:26:44 -0800

HA HA brownpau that site is hideous and I Laughed So Hard My Body Almost Turned Over On the Carpet (LSOHMBATOOTC)

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:16:12 -0800

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:42:35 -0800

Hi fixedgear.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 19:43:02 -0800

Brownpau, that was brilliant.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 21:57:04 -0800

How sad. I still think Google blows goats at everything but search (I include their news tool in that) and maybe mail. They bought everything they've got that doesn't look and work like ruminant ass, in my humble. Video? Ass. Newsreader? Ass. This thing? Goatse-riffic. I could go on, but I've been annoying enough already, no doubt. Also: Migs!

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 21:57:33 -0800

Also also: well played, brownpau!

By: jimfl

jimfl — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 06:32:27 -0800

Eight words. From Miguel. Now you're just teasing us. For a brief time this morning brownpau was able to log in as any MeFi account and comment on FPPs.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 07:56:56 -0800

Sorry, goodnewsfortheinsane, guess I should have read the whole thread.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:21:27 -0800

They bought everything they've got that doesn't look and work like ruminant ass, in my humble. At least they're showing the good sense to purchase things not of the ruminating-ass variety. Think positive!