Google has just launched a new service: Google Sites.
Now you might be saying, how can this compete with Drupal, you can't alter the code? Well, put that thought on hold for a second, and take a look at the 5 example sites Google is showing off:
Company Intranet
Team Project
Employee Profile
Classroom
Student Club
Those groups make up a significant portion of the user base Drupal is trying to attract. And most of them would love to never have to touch a line of code.
Google is charging money for the premium version of this service ($50/user), so you can be sure they're going to put a lot of effort into making it a killer application. Take a look at the feature list:
- No HTML required
- Easy Theme Customization
- Embed multiple types of rich content
- Upload files and attachments
- Google-powered searching of all your content
- Hosted on world-class Google Servers, no installation process
Of course, it's possible to add most of these things to Drupal (and that's how many of us make our living), but Google is offering these features out of the box, no expert services required.
In my opinion, this is a very big development. What kind of impact will it have on the traditional CMS marketplace? Only time will tell, but one thing is for certain: There's a new kid on the block, and he has deep pockets.
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John Forsythe
Need reliable Drupal hosting?
Comments
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You are thinking of Yahoo groups, not Drupal. There will always be those that realize the power of owning your own content. These are the same people that moved off Blogger and onto other self hosted platforms.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
I'd venture we're in the minority now.
I agree about content ownership, and personally, I'm in the group who wants my data on my servers. Most developers probably feel the same.
However, there is an increasingly large number of individuals, businesses, and institutions willing to trust Google with their data. The recent flock of universities shutting down their mail servers and moving to school-branded G-Mail, for example.
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John Forsythe
Looks like they disable
Looks like they disable things like ... javascript surprise surprise.
Doesn't look like you can create your own themes either.
Depends on what you mean by theme.
It does look fairly customizable. Check out these two examples, both apparently running on the same template, but with very different looking "themes".
http://sites.google.com/a/googleuniversity.org/ski-club/Home
http://sites.google.com/a/altostrat.com/jkraus/Home
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John Forsythe
I agree, but if you notice,
I agree, but if you notice, the only big changes is the coloring. The navigation etc. etc. all remain in the same place. I was referring to theming like how drupal does it, or wordpress etc.
I think the market Google is
I think the market Google is targeting is pretty different to that of Drupal.
Maybe
Maybe. Flickr targets a pretty different market than Gallery, too. But I wonder how many users compare them. As a photographer, I know I have. I went with Gallery (it's open source, I keep my own data, and I can heavily customize it). But Flickr still tempts me.
Will Google Sites tempt Drupal users? Well, take a look at page 40 of Dries' State of Drupal 2007 presentation, it's a list of "Top Things Drupal End-Users Want"
http://buytaert.net/files/state-of-drupal-september-2007.pdf
I think you'll find a lot of similarities between that list, and what Google is claiming to offer with this launch.
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John Forsythe
a wild shot...
if i take a wild shot i would say it will be blow to the resources for and behind CMS's like Drupal and the others.
by resources i mean the time, energy and financial investment
that might include contributor's time as the market and the expectations shrink they might put their time,energies and money to somewhere else
with the market shrinks value of the companies might drop (i.e) acquia and others might not set off in the future, -relative boom might be come to early death or all will find another direction and reshape the strategy and parameters in context of the competition
because it the google product is identical and convenient' -a the first instant for an average 'consumer' market and google's dominance of the market, it's wealth of resources - like other integrated own products and -perceived- trust ability for the average user/client in the market.
-however all those will be more questionable in time
just look at closer the privacy and t/c
http://www.google.com/sites/privacy.html
http://www.google.com/privacy_faq.html#serverlogs
interesting times...
agree
Totally agree. That service will take some part of market, but IMHO not from Drupal's part of market.
Google provides an instant and less flexible solution. On the other hand, Drupal requires more time for learning, but it gives you flexibility and freedom.
And also important thing, with Drupal, you can own your content! With Google, you don't.
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Alan F.
themeartists.com
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I'm unimpressed.
this is NOT a directly relevant competitor for a full CMS..
i really don't see the comparison - this is a substitute for low and medium sized collaborative application users - google pages is the most recent incarnation of the jotspot wiki application with hooks into google apps...
for education, this is great for classes and group collaboration (or small nonprofits, etc) - same market as google apps - particularly with ties into docs and all of that, including file sharing - and don't get me wrong - i DO see how it competes with drupal (or any cms, even wordpress as a cms etc) but i do NOT see it as a relevant substitute for how drupal works in large scale implementations (think theonion.com, fastcompany.com, teamsugar.com, new york observer...the list goes on and on)...or even medium sized implementations (like regional community sites and so on)
it will be a long long while before google sites implements the permission level viewing and admin controls that have been inside drupal for years - the current sites only has three control options (tried it out today in my google apps account)...and there is no real workflow for document control and processing beyond those same types of basic sharing rules...and this doesn't even begin to touch theming or the future direction of drupal's increasingly simplified installation and administrative processes (many of us remember a time long before drag and drop menu ordering or any of that stuff)
the modules and tools that have been built for drupal are designed to extend functionality for myriad needs, allowing for highly personalized installations that serve infinite user combinations (literally endless, maybe not infinite, let's argue about that ;) ...and implementation results in direct benefits for the users...
...but at the low end of the google sites offering, even if they were to hypothetically develop a drop-in 'widget' approach to adding tools (as i'm sure they will, since it will just mean bringing 'igoogle' personalization to google sites as a step one, then encouraging devs to make widgets that do more for the benefit of google gears and offline use), i'm not so certain that devs are going to be as eager to help Big Corporation make money for the benefit of Big Corporation and Big Corporation shareholders - that's antithetical to what the guiding motivations are for drupal contribs (help yourself, help everybody, help everybody help themselves for the benefit of everybody, because everybody is a shareholder and everybody gains [etc] - the google model is 'more features, happier users, more money for Big Corporation, if users don't want this they may pay Big Corporation more money directly instead of indirectly as an advertising channel. period. "
that's my take. imho, the features do not even compare. again, i was inside google sites today...it's neat, and definitely useful, but not impressive for serious applications...and i'm not just talking about how ugly it can be...
...and i also do not believe that it's just about controlling content through your own drupal install versus letting elGoog do it; it's about being part of a group that collectively owns the progress and enables you or anybody to design and implement an idea free from any corporate dictum or operating model that conflicts with your goals...if you got ideas, they may become features in core, in a module, a theme and so on - good luck getting your voice to rise above the noise to be heard at google without a boycott in place to motivate internal listeners...
so yeah, i don't expect to see the new york times rebuilding on google sites this year or next decade, or the us army, or fidelity investments, just as i don't expect bank of america to start storing data on swiveldb or dabbledb this year or in 10 years....oh, and besides, pbwiki is sooo much better than jotspot ;)
I agree
I agree, and I expect high-end corporate customers will continue to flock to Drupal. They'd be foolish not to ;)
I think it's the smaller guys, the wannabe-pro-bloggers, the teacher who needs to post lessons online, the mom-and-pop-shops, and other small non-techy businesses who will be taking a second look. And they outnumber Drupal's big corporate users 100 to 1 (probably more, there's 250,000+ registered Drupal users).
That said, I don't see a lot of them switching at this point. Drupal is continually getting easier to use, and version 7 is looking to be a major breakthrough in terms of reaching even more of those users. :)
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John Forsythe
RE: "the teacher who needs
RE: "the teacher who needs to post lessons online" --
Funny you should mention that -- I'm in the middle of writing up a recipe laying out how to use Drupal as a lesson repository that can scale to meet the needs of an individual teacher (on the simple end) to the needs of a school (on the more complex end).
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
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I helped a friend with a site for doing this in a simple way. She found the number one thing it did was eliminate late phone calls from parents and students asking what the homework assignment was.
http://www.woodfordscience.com/
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
From looking this over, I
From looking this over, I think this will probably take a greater chunk of users from the Wordpress-as-CMS crowd than Drupal -- and possibly Joomla as well.
The Google solution will probably be a good fit for those who want a clean site up quickly, where Drupal is a better fit for those who have a broader range of needs, are concerned about their data, etc, or who have had a simple web site for a while, and are looking for something more flexible/extensible.
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
bread and circuses
this isnt a threat to drupal at all. like verymis, i'm unimpressed as are others: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=330
besides, google is getting out of hand. between storing my searches, my ip, my location, my purchases, and sending google cams around the streets-- the amount of info they have on us is becoming quite frightening. Now they want all our data too?
No thanks.
Imagine for one second what the outcry would be if Microsoft had this amount of information on internet users....
wordfallz - you may **really** enjoy this article about google..
very interesting bit of stuff i put together on how google data organization compares directly to an 80's government tracking initiative built on software called "PROMIS" (founder was exNSA, i've actually tracked him down and plan to try to interview him for a published article)
http://www.passingnotes.com/archives/2007/09/10/is-google-the-real-octop...
techcrunch review of the google sites
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/27/it-took-16-months-but-google-relaun...
jotspot? i did not realised it as reincarnation of jotspot , i rather though the google sites is improved version of the google pages, in fact the googe pages still alive unlike the jotspot
http://pages.google.com/-/about.html
The true problem with Drupal
The true problem with Drupal (and other CMS) is hosting. Overselling, lack of performance, crowded SQL servers are problems a Drupal user face everyday.
Despite their limitations, Google apps seem interesting for all those people who don't have enough knowledge, time or money to invest on their own virtual/dedicated server. Many people I know, including businesses, already have migrated to Gmail for their mailing, and they're happy with that move. I think that Google apps seems more appealing to them now.
No way!
Google site is by no means Drupal's competitor.
Disagree.
Not sure why this is getting bumped a year later, but...
Looks like Google has signed up around 250,000 users for the service so far.
They're pushing it pretty hard, too: Just a couple days ago, I saw "NEW: Get a free website with Google!" on the front page of Google.com.
I stand by my statement that they're a big competitor for users.
--
John Forsythe
Drupal Modules - Find the module you need for your project!
You can't control market
You can't control market shifts, supply and demand, evolution, etc, the direction Google is heading could very well put many people out of business, that's the name of the game. You can't possibility think everything will always remain the same. Technology is evolving so fast, someday even programmers will be out of a job. CMS is not going to last, especially the ones that are complicated to use. Already people are giving up old ways and following the new, is Google evil for innovation ? I think not. Google does things better, can't argue about that, what is ownership, does anyone really own anything these days ? People and businesses are going to gravitate towards the best deal and less complications, even if it means giving up their ownership, they already are.
Google Sites and Blogger, for small sites and blogs
It seems Google Sites is an alternative to Drupal, just like Google's Blogger is an alternative to WordPress. That is, for small sites and for small blogs, respectively.
tag
tag
Just opening my big mouth
I'll never give up my drupal theme skillz for a crappy google site that costs 50 bones. Meanwhile, it would be nice if Drupal could do a few things:
1) Hit a few new audiences up. Finally develop a decent gallery module? Maybe work with patterns so that people can give their users options for one-click installs? Seriously, it seems like common sense. I don't know what's retarding the process along these lines. I feel like the people at Drupal are afraid of the power that Drupalistas would have if they were able to offer one-click pattern sites to their audiences.
2) Maybe do some tutorials for building clones of the sites google offers. ^^ That would be crazy.
Stumbled across this
Google sites are free now. Also, integrated with google apps (which education and 501(c)3 orgs can get for free).
Then again we now have drupalgardens (among others).
Google advantage I think is integration with google apps (and name recognition/comfort level with non-tech savvy folks). Gardens advantage is if you outgrow it you can "take it with you" (or of course upgrade with acquia).
Obviously google sites hasn't killed drupal yet ;)
My opinion about free stuff on the web is that eventually it's always going to be geocities all over again.
Nothing more than another Geocities
That's the same thing I was telling my collegaes this morning.
Nothing too different from a 1997 Geocities site.
The big trouble with google sites is: if the big bosses don't have a clue of what is going on about a drupal web site/web application, they can wrongly think it is portable to such a joke, let's call it "google shits".
And there is some horrible impression: unless some big change is made about marketing Drupal, and making it to appear feasible to use to non-tech users, it will be its death.
We need more non-tech users to be willing to use drupalgardens.com and the fine distros out there