BASEMENT.ORG

Google has unleashed their latest offerng: Google Page Creator. It's a WYSIWYG-style page editor (anyone remember Homestead?) that lets you create your own pages (a bunch of pre-canned styles are available) and host them on Google's web site (up to 100MB).

Will something like this take off? Google has a few things going for it. It looks relatively easy. It's a Google-branded product. There's obviously not a lot new here. Geocities and AOL home pages of years ago told the world that, well, most people don't know a lick about design. All in all, it's pretty Web 1.0. With blogs you had the immediacy of simple publishing. With social apps like Myspace, you have the tools to connect with others and such. Google Page Creator may be the foundation for all sorts of neat features. Maybe we'll be able to host our own music or movies (not someone else's of course)? Searchenginewatch points out that stuff like this can often get hijacked by the porn industry (Google Base is flooded with adult material). We'll have to see how well the masses behave on this one.

Another angle is the resulting markup that's created. Drew McLellan sums it up: "Signup was painless, editing was painless, publishing was painless. The resultant markup? Painful."