Google Sites, Publishing, and Search
March 1, 2008
In the Seattle airport, I fielded a telephone call on February 28, 2008, about Google Sites, the reincarnation of Joe Kraus’s JotSpot, which Google acquired in 2006.
The caller, whom I won’t name, wanted my view on Google Sites as a “SharePoint killer”. As you know, Microsoft SharePoint is a content management system, search and retrieval engine, and “hub” for other Microsoft servers. SharePoint is a digital Popeil Pccket Fisherman or Leatherman tool.
Google Sites is definitely not SharePoint, nor is it a SharePoint killer. SharePoint has upwards of 65 million users, and it is — whether the users like it or not — going to be with us for long time. SharePoint is complex, requires care and feeding by Microsoft Certified Professionals, and requires a number of other Microsoft server products before it hums.
The person who called me wanted me to agree with the assertion that Google Sites is the stake through SharePoint’s bug-riddle heart. SharePoint and I have engaged in a number of alley fights, and I think SharePoint left me panting and bruised.
What is Google Sites? If you have read other essays on this “no news” Web log, you know that I try to look at issues critically and unencumbered by the “received wisdom” of the crowds of Internet pundits.
I included a chapter in my September 2007 study Google Version 2.0 that summarized a few of Google’s content-centric inventions. The JotSpot acquisition provided Google with software and engineers “up to speed” on a system and method for users to create structured information. The structured reference means that content keyed into the JotSpot interface is tagged. Tagged information can be indexed and the metadata allow the information to be sliced and diced. (Sliced and diced means manipulated programmatically.)
So, JotSpot is a component in a broader information initiative at Google. The JotSpot interfaces are fairly genertic, and you can review them here. There’s an employee profile, a student club, and a team project. Availability is limited to users who sign up for Google Apps. You can read about these here.
What I want to do is direct your attention to this diagram that I developed in 2005 for my Google Business Strategy seminars that I gave between 2004 – 2006.
Notice that this diagram doesn’t make any reference to the enterprise. The solid blue arrows indicate that Google has project underway with these entities. Underway, as I use the word, means with or without the cooperation of the identified organizations. For example, Google is indexing US government content for its US government information search service. You can access this service here. The other light yellow boxes name Google services, including Google’s scanning and indexing services, among others.
The dotted line connecting Google to authors is the Google Sites’ function that I think is more important than SharePoint features, the well-known and often controversial deals for information, and the Google Base “upload” function.
I think Google Sites makes it possible — let me emphasize that this is my opinion — and I have zero interaction with Google. Google ignores my requests for comments and information. So internalize this information before reading the next paragraph.
Google Sites makes it possible for Google to go directly to authors, have them enter their information into the Google Sites’s interface, and make that original, primary information available to Google users. With the flip of a bit, Google morphs into a publisher. Google Sites has the potential — if Google wishes to move in this direction — to disintermediate traditional information middle “men” (I’m not being sexist; I’m just using jargon, gentle readers.)
Now let me tell you what I told the person who called me at 10 pm on Thursday, February 28, 2008, as I waited for a red eye to wing me back to the bunker in Harrod’s Creek. I said (and I’m paraphrasing):
“Google Sites may impinge on SharePoint over time. Google Sites may make Google Apps more appealing to enterprise customers. But I think the real significance of Google Sites is that Google is edging ever closer to getting authors to create information for Google. Google can index that content. Slice it. Dice it. Sell it. Authors have been getting a short end of the royalty and money sticks since Gutenberg. If Google meshes selling information via Google Checkout with Google advertising, Google can offer authors a reasonable percentage of the revenue from their work. In a flash, some authors would give Google a whirl. If the authors get reasonable money from their Google deal, it is the beginning of a nuclear winter for traditional publishers. I’m an author. I actually like my publishers Harry Collier, Tony Byrne, Tom Hogan, and Frank Gilbane. But if Google offered me a direct deal with them, I would take it in a heartbeat. This author wants money.”
My caller did not want to hear this. She works for a large, well known publisher. My take on Google Sites pushed her cherished SharePoint argument aside. My suggestion that Google Sites could generate money faster and with greater long-term impact than mud wrestling with Microsoft was one she had not considered.
I know from my work with traditional publishers that the majority of those business magnates don’t think Google could lure an author under contract without a great deal of work. I don’t agreement. The traditional publishing industry is panting between rounds. Many of its digital swings are going wide of the mark.
Google Sites might be a painful blow, worsened as the publishing industry watches the authors swarm to the Google. Google has search and eyeballs. Google has ads and money. Google has original content and people who want math and health information in real time, not after a 12 month peer review process. Times are changing, and most traditional publishing operations are moving deck chairs on a fragile ocean liner of a business model. SharePoint might be collateral damage. The real target are the aging vessels in the shipping lanes of traditional publishing.
Agree? Disagree? Let me know.
Stephen Arnold, March 1, 2008
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