Web designers beware. Google is expanding its templates for Google Sites, which is part of Google Apps, and the company is really pushing Google Apps these days. What this means is that as more businesses adopt Google Apps and find a wider variety of site templates to choose from, the less they may need the services of web designers for basic design work (developers are a different story).

Ok, perhaps it is a bit of an exaggeration to assume that this is going to completely put web designers out of work. Website templates have been around for years. It’s just that the potential of Google Apps to infiltrate more and more offices may lead to more widespread use of Google Sites.

Google has just launched a new template gallery for Google Sites, and it is public. Anyone can contribute templates by simply following these steps:

1. Open up the site you want to add to the gallery (the site must be published and you must be an owner to submit the site).

2. Select ‘More actions’, ‘Manage site,’ ‘General’, and chose ‘Publish this site as a template.’

3. Choose a template name, a category, enter a description and click ‘Submit template.’

While anyone can browse the gallery, businesses using Google Apps each have a private area where employees can share site templates with coworkers. Site templates can be used not only to build business websites, but intranets and more.

"The rate that businesses are adopting Google Sites has surpassed our expectations, and templates will make Sites even more useful by dramatically reducing the time it takes to set up collaborative workspaces like employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites and employee profile pages," says Google Sites product manager Scott Johnston. "Templates let you quickly start a new site with pre-built content, embedded gadgets, page layouts, navigation links, theming and more."

Given that anyone can contribute templates to the gallery, it stands to reason that it will grow quickly and greatly. One knock against site templates has always been that they don’t make for a unique design. These days the chances of having a truly unique design are getting slimmer and slimmer as the web becomes more flooded with content. However, the more templates that are available, the less chances you have of actually coming across different sites that use the same one. Given that this is a Google product, it’s almost certain that it will get many contributions.

Do you think designers should worry about Google Sites? Share your thoughts here.

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