Google has launched Sites, a product developed from its 2006 JotSpot acquisition.

Designed for team based site building and collaboration, the application can be used to build intranets, projects spaces, on-line classrooms and generic web sites.

Welcome to Google Sites via kwout

Sites are built from combinations of:

• Web pages with WYSIWYG editing and version control.
• Dashboards composed of collections of gadgets.
• Dated announcements that act as internal blogs.
• File Cabinets used for storing and describing binary files.
• Sortable Lists.

Pages can be enhanced with gadgets that integrate with other Google services:

• Calendars
• Documents
• Picassa web slideshows
• Spreadsheets
• Spreadsheet Forms
• Presentations
• YouTube
• Google Video

Specialised gadgets help with navigation

• Table of Contents
• Recent Posts
• Recent Uploaded Files
• Text Blocks

Any standard gadget from the iGoogle directory can be embedded in a page, as can Google Mashups and bespoke gadgets built on top of the Google Gadget API.

Sites has a small collection of themes. Additional options give a more refined control over backgrounds, logos, color schemes and fonts. The visual appearance will be adequate for many applications, but will not be sufficiently distinctive for sites that require strong branding and highly distinctive visuals.

While Sites is best suited to intranet/workgroup use, the easy integration with other feeds and services makes it a platform worth considering for public facing content driven applications, particularly those that integrate data from a variety of sources.

Official Google Blog: Bringing it all together via kwout

Integrating well with Google Apps for Teams, Google Sites is in direct competition with Microsoft Sharepoint. It again uses a bottom up marketing strategy, allowing workgroups to introduce technical solutions linked via company email addresses.