Google has released their newest web-based utility today, dubbed the Google Page Creator. The new service allows you to create, preview, and publish (basic) web pages via a browser.

The pages when published are available then at <username>.Googlepages.com/<page>. You can see an few examples of what I created here, here, and here. The service currently allows you 100 MB of space to be used for your pages as well as uploaded files. Though I wonder if we’ll see this increase in GMail style later on.

It’s a pretty basic service for now, though I can see a lot of ways Google could make more use of this. Integration with Blogger.com, which could allows bloggers to easily create new site layouts and designs. Google is an ICANN accredited registrar, so they could viably use this service in conjunction with that to allow people to buy a domain name, and then publish web sites (probably with free email provided by GMail).

Who knows what exactly will come of this service. For now, free services like Geocities still offer more features, even if they require banners and/or popups, however given some time to mature, Google’s Page Creator could shake up the free web hosting world.

Two main problems that I have with the service as it is…
First, the service, like many of Google’s past services, does not support Opera. Nothing major, as the Opera Community is use to getting the shaft from Google.
The next issue is that the pages created via the GPC are set with a DTD of XHMTL 1.0 Strict, however it doesn’t validate. This is also a common problem among Google’s services. You’d think a company who’s main focus is on the web, could at least accomplish two small tasks like browser compatibility and standard compliance.

Though, it is beta…