Google launched on Thursday a service that lets people create their own Web pages hosted by the Internet giant. Google Page Creator, which is in beta, has sample layouts and lets people type in content, upload images and publish their pages, without knowing HTML. People can create multiple linked pages and are allowed 100MB of storage on the service. The free service requires a Gmail account and supports either Internet Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 1.0, or higher.

The published site is hosted at http://gmailuser.googlepages.com/.

PC World has a quick rundown on the service at their site:

Page Creator puts your site at a yournamehere.googlepages.com URL, offers a maximum of 100MB of space, and only creates simple, static pages without flashy features, interactivity, or structure. So it's best suited for folks with extremely basic needs who want to get something on the Web with a minimum of fuss--but for that, it's worth a look. But it's a bit strange that Page Creator is a cutting-edge, extremely interactive Web service that...lets you create really old-fashioned, passive Web sites.

But a jillion other services--like Yahoo's GeoCities, the granddaddy of personal Web publishing for the masses--offer similar tools with scads more features, albeit with less slick user interfaces. Like a fair percentage of "Web 2.0"-type services, Google Page Creator may be more interesting as a technology demo than for what it actually lets you accomplish
-Due to the high demand, Google shut down the offer temporarily till they add more resources. Keep trying if you want an account