Google have launched an online web page creation program. The idea isn’t that new as all kinds of portals have been offering simple ‘create a web page’ wizards for years, but Google’s looks to be pretty good compared to most of those, and of course with the weight of Google behind it then we can’t really ignore it.
Initially, it may seem ‘oh my god, they’ve knocked the bottom out of the market!’. However, on reflection it may turn out to be a good thing for those who can actually provide a high value, high quality consultancy service. By providing a way for people who just want to put up anything online and aren’t too bothered about how it comes across it provides a free route to that. This isn’t taking away any of our clients, but it is stripping away the clients of the hobbyist with a dodgy copy of Dreamweaver who doesn’t mind building a website for £50.
No serious company is going to want a website address of http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com in any case. So it could be that the only thing that Google’s new Page Creator service may end up doing is creating another barrier to entry at the bottom of the market and strip out a few people who really shouldn’t be here in the first place.