Google Sites Closer to Launch?
Since October 2006 when Google announced they had acquired Jotspot - the wiki hosting service which allows you to create “rich web-based spreadsheets, calendars, documents and photo galleries” by using their wiki applications - people have been waiting for Google to do something with it.
Context & Ripple Effects
More than a year after the October 2006 JotSpot acquisition left Google holding a wiki platform with no visible product, the tracker Google Blogoscoped reports signs that something is finally moving toward launch. A September 2007 post had already floated the idea of JotSpot resurfacing inside Google Apps as a hosted wiki, and today's item reads as a continuation of that same watch rather than a confirmed announcement.
First-order effects
- Nothing has shipped yet — the launch signal is unconfirmed rumor — so the only immediate effect is on expectations: Google Apps subscribers waiting for a wiki-style collaboration tool have reason to hold off on third-party wiki hosting.
Second-order effects
- If Google folds JotSpot into Google Apps at no extra cost, standalone wiki hosting vendors face a bundled free alternative attached to a suite many businesses already run, pressuring their pricing and pushing them toward enterprise features Google may not match at first.
Third-order effects
- A Google Sites launch would extend the pattern of Google assembling its productivity suite through acquisitions — documents, spreadsheets, calendars, and now wikis — making the suite, not any single app, the unit of competition in web-based office software.
The trend: Google is converting acquired point products into bundled Google Apps components, so each acquisition becomes another lever in its contest with traditional office suites.