Google continues its acquisition and return-with-new-product approach on the web, this time with the long expected - 16 months now - Google Sites, a hosted wiki platform which can be used to build collaborative web sites. Sixteen months after Google acquired JotSpot, they’ve put it back online integrated into their Google Apps products suite. The whole idea is not a bad one at all. It has always been a problem for projects and companies working together to keep all of the necessary information together, to see who has made changes to documents and when and to keep this information at your fingertips at any computer in the world with an internet connection.

The idea of collaboration on the net is nothing new but the approach Google is using is more than interesting for the future with social-networking capabilities being put into the entire picture which Google is creating. The look and feel of the JotSpot application was adapted to the Google Apps Suite and as with JotSpot, Google Sites currently offers five page types and more should be added in the future. And to make sure that Google Sites takes advantage of many of Google’s other gadgets, APIs and iGoogle gadgets will be able to be embedded in this service. At the moment there is no databank connectivity which is a definite problem for larger collaboration groups but the system is at the beginning and Google doesn’t seem to be slowing down just yet.

Go to Google Sites to try it out and make your own opinion about this new product. Make sure to let us know what you think!

More about Google Sites:

Webware: Don’t call it a wiki: Google Sites finally launches
cNet News.com: JotSpot reincarnated as Google Sites
TechCrunch: It Took 16 Months, But Google Relaunches Jotspot

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