Most people know that for the past 6 months or so, Google has slowed its releases of very cool, interesting tools, and have acquired a good number of companies (some that make sense, and some that don’t…yet). But not too many people have figured out what Google is doing with all these seemingly one-off tools. I think today though, it became very apparent.
16 months ago, Google bought a wiki company called Jotspot (if you’re unfamiliar with what a wiki is, take a look at this definition). Wikis have been appropriated in a number of ways to date (for instance, Wikipedia). And at a conceptual level, they’ve made a lot of sense – its a central place to consolidate documents and information, and allow multiple people to see it, edit it, and maintain it. There just haven’t been many good platforms for companies to easily take advantage of wikis.
Until now.
Today Google relaunched Jotspot as Google Sites (sites.google.com). Users of Google Apps for your domain are the immediate beneficiaries of Google Sites, and with a few clicks, can set it up as a service for their organization. I’ll be giving a full review of Google Sites once I have a chance to build it out a bit.
But at a fundamental level, Google has created a true collaboration platform. Now, these one-off tools are all part of a larger purpose: to create and share information in a decentralized manner.
Google Sites is intended to allow you to post and share documents, spreadsheets, videos, photos, and general information. It comes with a central file/document repository, and robust permissions and security. And, of course, every part of the wiki is searchable thanks to Google’s search algorithm.
More on this collaboration platform soon, once I can get into it and uncover the details of it. For now though, rest assured it will be easy and intutive, just like everything Google builds.