Been struggling for days with Google Sites, even calling in help from Google Intergalactic HQ. Well as of this moment Google Sites is effectively down, having apparently lost all of our data and a few hundred thousand other wikis. Google Sites was real problems, not prime time.

It's been 16 months since since Google acquired the company from Excite founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer. During that time JotSpot languished and users — like me and my coworkers at my old gig — suffered from bugs and poor customer service.

If you like, blame the delay on JotSpot employees wasting their time at Google. After all, Kraus runs OpenSocial, Google PR's answer to what once looked like the runaway success of Facebook's application platform. One former JotSpot employee, Google Sites product manager Scott Johnston, seems to use his 20 percent time sending Twitters.

But more likely the delay is due to limited market demand for a "Sharepoint killer." Microsoft's SharePoint, which lets you post huge PowerPoint presentations to a file server instead of clogging your Exchange box with extra copies, has been doing a good job of killing itself. Do you know anyone who uses SharePoint willingly and gladly, without being strongarmed by a central IT department?

(Photo by ptufts)