I'm a little mystified by this one. Take a look here: http://pages.google.com -- it's basically a browser-based way to create web pages & web sites.

It's a fine idea, of course, but I'm pretty sure it was called Geocities the first time around.

I do think, though, that the web has changed since Geocities came out -- there are more specific types of pages & sites. Blogs. Photo sites. Movie sites. HotOrNot type things. Enough useful patterns like this have emerged that I'm unclear that generic HTML editors like Google Pages is worth it at all. Specifically the question I'm wondering about is whether the additional interface complexity that is a natural cost for including the HTML generality is worth it.

I think that the iWeb team at Apple figured this out.

Using iWeb, you can't do some of the more generic type changes you can with Google's new stuff. But you can share pictures like crazy. And you can run a journal like crazy. (I don't say "blog" here because it doesn't (yet) do things like comments & such.)

We'll see. Maybe they'll get it integrated with Google Base and Google Video and they'll together turn into some sort of amazing chocolate, peanut butter & ice cream milkshake. But I'm skeptical. Especially because I like so many of the other things that Google does. The disparity is just glaring.