In 2008, Google acquisition JotSpot announced that it would “expand upon the Google Page Creator already offered within Apps.” The idea was that JotSpot would power a system to help businesses set up their own collaboration, project management and customer extranets. After 3 years of sitting quietly in the Google arsenal, JotSpot has now reemerged in the form of a Google Sites Data API.
Scott Johnston, Senior Product Manager for Google Sites spoke to ReadWriteWeb about the benefits of this new API. In addition to offering users the ability to share and edit user content across Google Sites, all of your content can be accessed using the Google Data Protocol. In other words, as per Google’s Data Liberation Front, users can import and export apps from Microsoft SharePoint sites into Google Sites or vice versa.
One advantage over SharePoint is that Google Sites does not require users to maintain software on PCs. Google Sites builds on the company’s already well-established strengths – including cloud-based office tools and impeccable search. With the new API, if users choose to switch from SharePoint to Google Sites, they’ve now got an easy way to migrate their content.
