Are wikis going out of fashion or just being subsumed as an accepted feature of collaborative websites?
Google makes no mention of wikis in its announcement about Google Sites – the fruits of its acquisition of JotSpot, the enterprise-wiki Web 2.0 start-up, in October 2006.
Instead, it describes Google Sites as a “team web site” where users can quickly gather a variety of information and projects in one place, including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments and text.
I tried the new service and found it fairly easy to put together a web site where others could be given rights to comment and add their own elements.
It was intuitive for someone like me who was already using Google Docs or had a personalised iGoogle page – the toolbars are simple and similar and there is the same ability to select widgets and drag them around the page being created.
There were a few rough edges and limitations – I’m still searching for how to delete a page I’d created, for example. Others have been very disappointed with its flaws.
Sites can be integrated with email, calendars, documents and spreadsheets, and in this sense, it is less of a wiki like Wikipedia and more of an online collaboration service that will compete with Microsoft Office and its SharePoint service.
That is why the strategy here is to talk about the range of Google applications, rather than focus on the wiki aspects. Microsoft makes a slicker Office software suite, but Google is challenging it with its cheaper or free browser-based alternatives.
