WebProNews

Early this year, Google released "Google Sites," a platform that lets users create their own sites based on templates provided by Google. The company said that users could utilize Google Sites to create :

- an intranet to centralize company information;

- a team site to manage a project;

- a profile site including an individual's resume, areas of expertise, and goals for the quarter; and

- a virtual classroom to post homework assignments, class notes and other resources.

The platform allows people to embed content from YouTube, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Picasa as well as upload files of any type, and customize the look and feel of the site. Since the initial announcement, things have been relatively quiet on the Google Sites front, although over a million sites have so far been created according to Google Software Engineer Michael Cheng.

That number is likely to increase now because Google has opened up the platform to 37 new languages including: Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, English (UK), Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

"The latest release includes full localized versions of the Google Sites service and interface, enabling website creators and collaborators to interact more naturally with the product in their native languages," explains Tim Mansfield, another Google software engineer. "Browser settings are used to automatically detect and display the preferred language among those supported. You can also override the browser language and set your language preference directly in Google Sites."

It will be interesting to see how much of an increase in use occurs as a result of the new language options. Do you use Google Sites? What is your opinion of it?