Google finally unveiled Google Sites to the public, the reformatted product that leverages the JotSpot wiki technology they purchased almost two years ago. My first question is, how is this different than Google Page Creator? Sure, it's more shareable for open editing, which is the main focal point of a Wiki, but after watching the Google overview video for their new Sites product, it really feels like they're billing this as an easy website design tool, which is basically what Page Creator was. Now Page Creator has some additional features, such as easy implementation of Google Gadgets, and Sites has some additional features such as shared editing, but for the most part this could have been one product. Just because Nobody really uses Google Page Creator doesn't mean they should just leave it open and separate and lingering.
More worrisome is the continued developing trend of Google tossing redundant products out into market without a clear focus of how they will grow and become more useful. This is especially clear in the bookmarking sector, where Google now has Google Notebook, Google Bookmarks, Google Share, and Google Reader Notes. Now some of these are more social, some of these are more personal, and some of these are more about research, but in the end there is likely a way for Google to combine many of these products, leverage the interesting features from each, and create something more powerful for the user. Right now this is both confusing and unorganized, as I never know what to share how and when, and whether I'll be able to remember where to find it again. Yes that's because I haven't set rules for my own use, but I shouldn't have to if they have a clear vision.
Other places Google has redundancy? YouTube and Google Video come to mind right away. If Google Video is meant to be exclusively a video search engine, then they should migrate our uploaded videos from Google Video to YouTube and let us have our files in one place, with the added features that Google is rolling out for YouTube such as viewer statistics. Not only do these features not exist on Google Video, but in some fashion they did in the beginning, only Google has let Video linger and many features don't work anymore. That's almost a joke for them.
Thoughts?
