David Notik

There are reasons Google is revered, not the least amongst the web development types. Google has really demonstrated powerful web applications, and brought to the forefront an existing web application technique that has since come to be known as Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML). It's how you get the effect of dragging through the whole globe on Google Maps, spellchecking and autosave on Gmail (not to mention its speediness), and other slick functionality previously rarely seen on the web.

So, in classic Google style, their latest unveiling is a web-based web page creator (go figure) called the Google Page Creator, with all the great Ajax goodness. Now, even my Dad can figure out how to put up a simple little web page, using an intuitive, responsive tool. More here.

I do think that hosted, brochure-like, template-driven web pages are somewhat old-school, and people either upload their information to the web (for now, via micro-information services like eBay or the more general Google Base) or get a professional web site created and hosted at a personal web address/domain name. But watch for Google to integrate this technology with their other services like custom user profiles, Blogger, and even as the visual side to appropriate content types in Base.

Google hasn't officially mentioned this as of my posting. I'll update this as I have more to share.

Update. And, of course, powerful web-based document editing like this puts Google well on the way towards the web-based office suite everyone's predicting. The activity in that realm is heating up, and this is an important milestone for Google from a technology perspective -- what better way for Google to test what will eventually make its way into an as-yet-unacknowledged office word processor than by openly testing it via its seemingly unrelated web page creation service?