Still As Life

Google has launched it’s new wiki, providing the means for people to easily create their own sites in a wiki style environment. No, it is not called Wiggle, it is called Google Sites.

According to the overview provided by Google, Google Sites is:

“…the easiest way to make information accessible to people who need quick, up-to-date access. People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it’s just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world. The Google Sites web application is accessible from any internet connected computer. “

It’s an interesting concept and according to a news article on the Sydney Morning Herald, it incorporates collaboration features to rival Microsoft’s Sharepoint. I wonder about the accuracy of a claim like this. I haven’t tried it out myself as of yet, and while I can see it would provide an alternative to Sharepoint for some needs, especially those of students, I can’t see it being a rival just yet. However, it does add to my theory (more here) about Google becoming more and more of a competitor to Microsoft in the applications field.

Nice to see that someone else out there shares my point of view about the evolving competition between these two companies:

“By gradually introducing free versions of word processing, spreadsheet, and calendaring programs over the past two years, Google has been threatening to siphon revenue away from Microsoft, which makes most of its money from software sales.” - From the SMH article.

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