Google Sites launch - who owns the content?

February 28, 2008
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Google has launched their version of a "website overnight" - Google sites. Those who keep up with Google expected this to come soon.

Google Sites look easy to use (Great!) and manage. But, can you place ads on your Google Site? Can you use it for affiliate links? Can you create a social network site using Google Sites? My guess is no. I read through some of the Google Site terms (even more - conditions and privacy) and it states clearly (in more ways than one) that Google Sites has the right to take down your content (for breaking their terms/conditions). With the amount of restrictions, it would be easy to break a term/condition and not even know it.

The answer to the title, do you own the content? No, you don't. The convenience is there, yes. You work on the site, yes. You add content, yes. You use your time (not a Google employee) to manage the Google site, yes. But it is not yours. This seems like a theme with Google, thus my lack of love for them :(

My advice? Use it to learn more about building site content, train employees new to building conent, learn to use a wysiwyg editor and so on. When you are ready to "own" your own content, files, community, go with a good CMS - Drupal.

dunkoh

02.28.2008

Looking through this as well just now - and it seems that Google Sites is best suited for small project teams to collaborate - either in-house or with clients, etc.
I know a few folks at work will find it useful.

elvis

02.28.2008

@dunkoh, in the end, it won't matter. Companies, organizations, bloggers, we just want things easy. The costs? Cheap or even a free setup might be worth it to those folks who prefer ease over ownership (content, files, etc). Owership might be the thing of the past.

shirley

02.29.2008

I've just started using Google Sites this afternoon and I think it's great. The company I work at started using Google Apps about a year ago, and this new service is a very welcome addition to the Google Apps family. It's prefect for our intranet.

I do know some web design stuff and I have built a couple of Drupal sites, a couple of Joomla sites, a couple of Zen Cart sites and a couple of WordPress blogs, but Google Sites require the least time to get up and running, and the best of all, it integrates perfectly with Google Apps, which we love and use every single day. I would say that Google Sites is perfect for small businesses looking to setup an intranet that require very little effort to setup and maintain.

I totally LOVE Drupal, but for companies where there is no dedicated IT staff and everyone is constantly working their asses off, Google Sites is definitely a better solution.

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