In Google Apps, it seems like the pages general public should see should be served through Google Pages. Only Google Apps domain admins would be able to edit pages served through Google Pages. Arguably, these pages require strict control as it represents an organization to the the rest of the world. However, domain admins have too much power in modifying other aspects of the whole Google Apps domain. It would be nice if Google Pages could be controlled by a small group of people that are not necessarily Google Apps domain admins.

Another neat thing about Google Pages is that the custom URL selected will not get redirected into google.com URL. If you have chosen www.petahkata.net to go to your Google Pages landing page, the URL in your browser windows will not suddenly change to something else. We have tried to use www.petahkata.net to target Google Sites landing page but to no avail. We always get 404 Not Found error.

For creating pages for specific groups of people within the domain, Google Sites would be more appropriate. Here, specific site for a group of people can be created. We can let only the people in the group edit the site. Here is a test site that has been made public. We could not use "nice"  URL like http://pustaka.petahkata.net/sites-test/Home for it.

We believe a lot of people would find it confusing to have two apps, Google Pages and Google Sites, serving the same page creation needs. Even features used in editing pages are different. Users have more creative control on what to show on Google Pages than on Google Sites. We wish we could do away with the compulsory chrome surrounding pages in Google Sites.