Google Pages + Blogger + Measure Map = Good Product

Yesterday I noticed Google Pages had opened up again so I hurried over and tried it out quick before they closed it up again. I have to admit that it isn’t quite what I was hoping it would be but even so it’s still somewhat impressive. The editing features are nice if not a bit slow and I thought they were easy enough to use that even my mom could set up a site without calling me too many times.

The problem is I don’t understand why anybody would use Google Pages instead of Blogger, TypePad or WordPress.com to name just a few hosted blog choices. There isn’t really much you can do with Google Pages beyond setting up a collection of static pages.  It’s still in beta (go figure!) but I was hoping that you would be able to do more with the look and layout than select from the limited gallery of designs provided. When it comes down to it, all you can do right now is edit your content and format it with the tools they provided. If you’re comfortable with html you can switch over and edit the html...but only the content and not the site design or layout.

Even with that said, I think that Google could still create a pretty compelling product if they were to combine Blogger, Google Pages and Measure Map into a one-stop, online Web site creation tool with built-in analytics. This would require that a little more work be done with Pages but even with the way it is now you’d still have a pretty interesting product and of course it would be in beta so a few rough edges here and there wouldn’t matter. Measure Map is a great product and Blogger is still pretty good, the two alone would make a good product.

Google Pages, in a slightly better form, could be the third piece of a really cool product that I’d like to see. Otherwise I don’t really see Google’s latest beta product to be much more than something geeks with nothing better to do spend 30 minutes with on a Sunday afternoon.