News from around the net this leap day:

Google Quietly Enters Web Hosting

Google announced Google Sites yesterday, from the announcement:

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today introduced Google Sites™, an application that makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. With Google Sites, people can quickly gather a variety of information in one place – including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and text – and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, their entire organization, or the world.

At first glance it looks to be a swipe at Microsoft's SharePoint, offering a hosted variation of what SharePoint does locally. SharePoint's first conference is next week, so the timing of the announcement is significant.

You can purchase a domain or use an existing domain for Google Sites. In effect, but not really publicized, Google will be your web host. From the Information Week article:

Google Sites is available through the Team (free), Standard (free), Premier ($50/user/year), and Education Edition (free) of Google Apps. The service includes 10 GB of storage. Google Apps Premier users receive an additional 500 MB per user account in the domain. That's in addition to the 6.4 GB and 25 GB of e-mail storage offered to Google Apps Standard and Premier Edition users respectively.

Risha Chandra, product manager for Google Apps, said that storage allocations would rise over time, as they do with Gmail.

Those sound a lot like web hosting terms. I could find no information on bandwidth. There are some catches. You cannot use custom CSS style sheets, you have to stick with the provided templates. Javascript is limited and IFRAMEs aren't allowed.

Google Sites is based on the wiki technology of JotSpot, whom Google purchased in October 2006.

Hostway Announces “Early Adopter” Deal

Hostway announced at 10% lifetime savings and free setup for customers who purchase dedicated hosting with Microsoft Windows Server 2008. The press release is here. There are a flurry of announcements regarding the release of Server 2008, Hostway is clever to capitalize on it. I wonder if Microsoft is funding the promotion. Will you be looking to use Server 2008? Leave a comment!

Web Host Lux Scientiae Incorporated Launches LuxSci Platform

Lux Scientiae Inc. has announced the launch of their LuxSci Platform, used on their servers, allowing their clients to run the hosting software on their own servers. They will provide free consulting to determine the hardware requirements, the number of servers, type of servers, and the operating system necessary for running the LuxSci Platform software. Training is included as well. After installation, the expectation is that the clients provide their own technical support. Higher level support will be available for an additional fee.