16 months after acquiring JotSpot, Google relaunched it tonight as Google Sites:

Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it’s just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world.

People can work together on a Site to add…new free-form content.

What they’ve left out of the description is just as telling as what they included, and what they left out is any reference to the word wiki. There’s a pattern on Wikipatterns.com that suggests not using the word wiki when first introducing people to the tool. This helps avoid Wikiphobia, or misunderstanding by people who

• Don’t know what a wiki is and are generally afraid of new tools
• Automatically assume any wiki is like Wikipedia

Google may be taking a similar approach here, and sticking with “Sites” since it’s a more known term at first, and the collaborative nature becomes apparent when people use it.

Scott Karp makes an excellent argument about how a simple user interface enables greater adoption and more effective use of advanced tools:

The archetypal example of simplicity driving technology adoption is Google search. Type what you’re looking for into a box and click “search.” What could be simpler? Especially when that’s the only thing on the page. [Read more]

Google has announced its new knowledge platform, called Knol. “Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it.” [Read more]

Just got an email from JotSpot/Google notifying users that all wiki sites will be upgraded to version 2.9 in the coming week. According to the email, the upgrade adds support from Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2, fixes some RSS issues and adds RSS feeds for some of [Read more]

Just had a conversation with Joe Kraus, JotSpot’s co-Founder and CEO. We discussed today’s acquisition announcement, and here’s what Joe had to say. Google was attracted to JotSpot because the JotSpot wiki fits [Read more]