Google has added a new tool to its collection of online resources. Google Page Creator is a template-based web authoring tool. A web author interacts with the tool using a browser much in the way one would interact with a blog tool. Google hosts the site (you are allowed 100 mb of content at present). Obtaining permission to use the site is developing in a similar fashion to that used to gain access to Gmail – you submit your name and wait. I was allowed to use the tool after a wait of less than two weeks.
My initial page appears below (the real thing can be viewed at http://markgrabe.googlepages.com/).
Google Page Creator is still under development and evaluation so it would be dangerous to predict exactly where Google intends to go with this tool. Unlike other Google tools that include ads, it is unclear to me how this service will be supported. Perhaps it is another tool intended to draw users into the overall Google web of services (some of which generate revenue through ads).
I think online web authoring tools have educational potential. Tools such as this offer some multimedia authoring benefits beyond blog tools and are easier to use than dedicated, desktop-based authoring software.
The way Google tends to do things, these tools will represent a significant challenge for competitors. I like the new iWeb tool that came as part of iLife06. However, I had to pay for iLife and I pay for my .mac account. The cost is not high, but if Page Creator will eventually be available to all comers, schools may find Creator an attractive opportunity.
