What makes this dialog interesting is that this is likely the first time Google has brought all of these services together and also made it easy to search for documents across all of these services. Of course, in the context of Google Sites, it makes perfect sense to see all of these assets in one dialog, but until now you couldn't directly access Picasa's albums from Google Sites, for example.

We can't be sure if this is really a harbinger of the Google Drive, but hopefully Google will bring this interface to other services like Gmail or even Google Wave.

According to MessageLabs, Google Sites spam only accounts for 1% of all spam at the moment, but they expect this technique to become as popular as similar techniques being used to distribute spam using other free Google online services, including Google Docs, Google Pages, and Google Calendar.

The benefit to using Sites for spamming is that it's harder to block the resulting URLs generated by the service. Unlike Google Pages, whose URLs are in the format of accountname.googlepages.com, a Sites URL begins http://sites.google.com/site/. The format of these URLs, which contain "google.com," are more difficult for traditional signature-based anti-spam tools to block. At the tail end of the URL, the spammers' sites will contain site names that are composed of random letters and numbers.

Sites is certainly not the only Google product that has been adopted by spammers. For example, I noticed an increase in Google Groups-related spam messages arriving in my Gmail inbox recently. Google Sites looks to be more of the same. Spammers are certainly clever, so it's up to the makers of anti-spam technology to combat this latest threat of "Google Spam." Clearly, just because something is hosted at google.com, it should not automatically be considered safe or trustworthy.

The bigger question here is how the rise of Google spam is being addressed by Google themselves? Surely, they are concerned about their name becoming associated with sites hosting malware and spam?

Google would not confirm how they were addressing this specific problem or how they address spam in general, saying that they needed to be careful not to provided spammers with any clues as to what they do. However, they did say that they expect spammers to use every means possible to try to send spam and that they have a very robust spam-fighting effort at Google. They also claim that they disable these accounts immediately and will continue to do so.

Market Players

Geocities itself is still active in the website creation market. Here are some of its competitors:

• Google Sites (it evolved out of one of Google's acquisitions, JotSpot, and is now available for free separately from Google Apps)
• Weebly (a Y Combinator company)
• SynthaSite (our coverage)
• Sampa (our coverage)
• SiteKreator
• Webon (a recently launched offering from Web 1.0 stalwart Lycos)

Who's using these products? Website creation platforms are aimed at people who just want a regular website; for example people who want to chronicle their wedding or holiday, families who want to track their family history and growth, or retailers who want to build a web presence.

Often these tools have 'drag and drop' functionality, so you can create a new website in a matter of hours without needing to know HTML or have particular design skills. Lycos told us that their product Webon is "geared toward more casual users, e.g. parents, travelers, shutterbugs, who want more control and a more stylized web presence than typical blogging tools or social network profiles allow for."

Note that you could argue that DIY social networks like Ning are competing in this space, although Ning co-founder Marc Andreessen thinks otherwise. I'm inclined to agree with him, because social networks, blogs, wikis, and websites are all different beasts.

Social Web Twist

Website builder platforms in the web 2.0 era, where mashups and open data are common, typically offer ways to integrate with 3rd party apps. This can take the form of widgets, or even utilizing other sites' APIs. This is probably the biggest difference between Geocities 1.0 and the 2.0 era web publishing platforms. But also these platforms usually offer the ability to add blogs, RSS feeds, multimedia, privacy controls, and more.

Google Sites diagram, from their homepage

As an example of what these products now offer, Lycos told us recently that Webon supports the OpenSocial API "for thousands of add-ons and widgets (such as iGoogle gadgets and Google FriendConnect), with no HTML or CSS knowledge needed, as well as OpenID to enable DIY social network connections."

Another common feature in the new website creation tools is use of Ajax to build sites. While at the Web 2.0 Expo a couple of months ago, I dropped by the SynthaSite booth and was very impressed with the rich functionality and the ability to drag n' drop ajax widgets.

Who's Leading This Market?

Geocities and Google Sites have the biggest presence, simply because of their bigco backing. Among the startups, according to stats from Compete, the leading small co is Weebly with SynthaSite showing positive growth.

Conclusion

An old cliche that Web entrepreneurs often wheel out at press time is that the market pie (for whatever segment they're in) is only getting bigger, so there's plenty of room for them and their competitors too. Well in the case of website creation tools, that's certainly true! One of the primary characteristics of the social web - aka web 2.0 - is that anyone can easily publish content to the Web. So there is a lot more need these days, compared to the 90's, for web publishing platforms of all varieties. Many RWW readers probably use blogging and/or social network tools, and micro-publishing tools like Twitter and FriendFeed. But for many other people, straight website creation tools - like Geocities and its many competitors - fit their needs better.

To finish, here's a brain teaser for you: what will Geocities 3.0 look like? ;-)