[Continuing my brief series on Google Sites.]

The best thing about Google Sites is that you don’t have to be a webmaster or IT person to set it up and use it — plus it’s free. Not only that, a web-based collaboration tool hasn’t been readily available to most people before now. I can’t wait to recommend it to some groups I’ve helped build websites for. However, there are other Web users whom I’ll advise to steer clear. It’s not for everyone.

Who Can Make Great Use of Google Sites?

Small Non-Profits. It’s easy to imagine organizations like Gilda’s Club and RASAC building very useful intranets for themselves with Google Sites.

Churches. The observant might have noticed the picture in my first post was of an intranet for my church. To start with, I’m setting up a separate site for each committee that wants one and then tying them together in a central site. I’m particularly excited about rolling it out to our Stewardship Committee, which is knee deep in pie-charts, calendars, newsletter articles and so on. It will be very helpful to have most of this stuff in one easy-to-access place.

Small Businesses. Google has a helpful example of what this might look like.

Who Should Think Twice?

Individuals. This is a tool for collaboration and internal communication. It’s not really meant for an individual’s personal website.

Healthcare. While the sites do use a secure https connection, I couldn’t find any assurance that Google Sites are HIPAA-compliant.

Large business and organizations. I can imagine it working well for larger organizations in time — but not yet. There’s not enough substance or malleability to make it a good choice yet. The potential is enormous, however. I’m looking forward to watching Sites grow.