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Hi folks - my name is Matt, and I lead the "Presentation & Ideation" product team inside of Google/G Suite, which includes Classic and New Sites. This project

Hi folks - my name is Matt, and I lead the "Presentation & Ideation" product team inside of Google/G Suite, which includes Classic and New Sites. This project has been in the works for a while, so I'm happy to answer questions or take feedback here or you can email me at zito@(the google). Obviously my opinions are my own.

rurban 6y ago
Hi Matt, What was the rationale for this project? The joy of destruction?
- mattzito 6y ago
  Classic Sites has been around for a very long time (since 2008), and we've been working to make new Sites a better, more modern, more maintainable place to create and host websites. The vast majority of users are choosing to create their sites with new Sites, and the vast majority of current classic sites receive no edits and no traffic. We first announced this gradual plan in 2017, with an update in 2019, and now we're providing the detailed plan. The goal was to provide adequate notice for people to figure out whether migration, export, or deletion of their classic sites makes the most sense. EDIT: to the multiple people that are highlighting that 12 years is not a long time, I should clarify. I agree that 12 years in Internet time is not a long time, but it is a very long time in "how websites work" time. One of the big challenges in the website builder space, something that Google. Wix, Squarespace, have all dealt with - is that when a user publishes a website, there's an expectation around the fidelity and look-and-feel of that website. The data model and architecture for how you represent a rendered page, how you render embedded content, all are very dependent on how browsers work at that time, and the maintenance of those things can become very challenging. There was a big shift about ~7 years ago, moving away from a "pixel perfect" layout/raw html approach (Wix, Old wordpress, SQSP 5, Classic Sites), to one where there's some sort of grid-and-box approach where the render is responsive, there's reflow, there's padding and spacing and styling relative to the browser experience. It separates out content from layout to a certain degree in a way that is much more future-proofed and modern. This is how Wix ADI, Squarespace 6+, Wordpress Gutenberg, and new Sites work. For all of those transitions, there was a platform shift, that required a complete rework of how the system works. My point about "12 years" was that the model of how classic Sites works is 12 years old, and new Sites was intended to match the modern way of how websites are built and delivered.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Externally, as you know, Google‘a reputation hasn’t been great when it comes to maintaining their services. What should have happened is to turn Classic Sites (and new Sites) itself into Squarespace competitor. I just see this as a massive failure of vision and execution. Why didn’t they improve classic sites and added yet another product called Sites? May be I am seeing some internal politics surface as fragmentation of product line.
    - mattzito 6y ago
      Fundamentally, classic sites works differently than new sites. It's basically not possible, for example, to make a classic sites website mobile responsive. That's a table-stakes feature for website builders today. To your Squarespace comparison, Squarespace went through a similar transition - Squarespace 5 worked very similar to Classic Sites, and was replaced with Squarespace 6, which was a complete end-to-end rewrite.
      - fermienrico 6y ago
        Yea, I think Google should continue to revamp things under the same product name. It is giving it a bad reputation for discontinuation of products left and right. Could have called it Classic Sites 2.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        The product name is Google Sites. With the introduction of the new configuration for that product in parallel, “classic” and “new” distinguished the available configuration. Classic now stops being the default and in a little over a year goes away, but the product (Google Sites) stays.
      - dwheeler 6y ago
        > It's basically not possible, for example, to make a classic sites website mobile responsive. Huh? Did that 10 years ago. Perhaps we have a different definition of a "classic site". To me a "classic site" is another name for a static site, that is, a website where the HTML to be served is pregenerated. Static sites are now coming back, not going away. But I always assumed that a website should reflow. Perhaps when you say "classic site" you mean "site that assumes that all users have the same display size". I agree that such classic sites are nonsense today. But they were always nonsense. At no time was there a guarantee of any particular screen size for HTML, and it's always been easy to write HTML that just reflows. If you do that, your site works just fine.
- rohan1024 6y ago
  Why so rude? You can't blame OP for Google's decisions.
  - BillinghamJ 6y ago
    As the product lead on the team, it likely is their decision (not to say that excuses rudeness though)
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    I don’t think it’s rude to tell people facts, this person is leading this effort.
  - rasz 6y ago
    Google is not sentient, someone inside Google decided to get a promotion by launching a "new thing", at the cost of deleting old content.
- abstractbarista 6y ago
  It's interesting how some people talk. I run a server for free that people store things on. They become irate when I no longer wish to provide the free service. Is that reasonable? My belief has always been "no". Google could kill off the entirety of GMail tomorrow, and I'd be disappointed, but totally understanding.
  - stallmanite 6y ago
    Are you a giant multinational that will need to convince people to store stuff on your server in the future? If not then this doesn’t apply to you so you can happily delete everything on your server.
tuyguntn 6y ago
how are you going to compete with MS office suite or similar, in any enterprise solution space if Google has bad reputation with product maintenance and shutting down products so fast? UPD: I assume Google Sites has lots of customers (we were one of them)
laurencerowe 6y ago
Any chance of supporting arbitrary static sites behind a login screen? You can almost do it with a Google cloud storage bucket but you have to put it behind a load balancer for https and the IAP login gate is not supported for bucket backends making it unsuitable for intranet sites.
- mattzito 6y ago
  It's a good question - I know we looked at the possibility of a cloud storage bucket, but there were some technical challenges there (possibly what you describe). Do you want to shoot me an email at zito@ and I can try to find someone to answer that question?
unixhero 6y ago
Hi, Why do you (your team) really have do do this? This is digital destruction. It's not about the features you shipped in 2008, and what those look like to a 2020 audience. It's about the content(!) which is part of the human creative endeavour. Thanks for taking questions.
- mattzito 6y ago
  I think this is an interesting point - I will say that the vast vast majority of these sites (unfortunately I can't disclose the number) have not received edits or even visits for more than two years. To me, archiving those sites doesn't feel like destruction, it feels like backing up unused content and protecting it for the user. From our research, a lot of users don't realize that these sites are still published, and in some cases don't want this content out there in the world. I think it's relevant that people should have control over their own information and what is live on the web. That being said, I hear the feedback, and I'll talk to the team about what we might be able to do, within legal and privacy constraints, to protect published sites.
  - cyphar 6y ago
    Sadly, this mentality reminds me a lot of the great GeoCities purge of 2009. Have you considered partnering with the Internet Archive to back up any publicly-accessible classic sites which you plan to purge? Whether or not a site has had visitors recently isn't a fair measure of the importance of those sites -- for instance, there were examples of digital shrines in GeoCities and Yahoo still decided to eradicate them all. It was only thanks to projects like the Internet Archive that we haven't lost that period of internet history just to free up some disk platter space. EDIT: I also am struggling to understand what this means: > To me, archiving those sites doesn't feel like destruction, it feels like backing up unused content and protecting it for the user. What does "archiving" mean here? Will the sites still be accessible or not? Is "archive" here a euphemism for "delete" -- in which case, how is it not like destruction and how is it like a "backup"? I'm not sure most people would consider "rm -rf" to be a backup strategy, but it definitely does have very good storage density.
brajesh 6y ago
I’ve about a dozen Google sites which are just an embedded Google form with a custom script at the back. I tried the conversion tool on a dummy site and it opened a Google doc. I am not sure how an HTML page with embedded Google form with a script will be converted to new Sites.
- mattzito 6y ago
  If you're comfortable, can you ping me on email at zito@? It's possible the custom script is the issue, but I'd be happy to take a look.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
EamonnMR 6y ago
Do you have a plan to offer backups to the Internet Archive/etc?
Apocryphon 6y ago
Are you at least designing New Sites in a way to make them easier to archive and preserve, after they are scrapped in 2032?
- rhizome 6y ago
  That would be a feature, so it needs to provide some kind of benefit to someone's career in order to be implemented. This is only for launching the feature, and maintenance is still unlikely.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
naetius 6y ago
Hi Matt, thanks for the AMA-like availability, really appreciate it. One question from me: how would you pitch "new Sites" for a potential new customer willing to use it, but afraid his/her/their content might not last the next "modernization" sweep? In other words: would you try to sell new Sites to a customer that values - and worries about - long term visibility of his/her/their content? If no: what is new Sites' value proposition, in terms of target market? Thanks again.
weejewel 6y ago
Hi Matt. Last time I checked the new Sites didn’t have per-page permissions for a G Suite organization. Is this still the case?
easton_s 6y ago
When are we getting an API for new sites?
prirun 6y ago
I have a Classic Site for Hashbackup.com. The pages are very basic text, with some bolding, italics, font face/size changes. Every page in the zip backup, no matter how simple, is around 59K because of all the Javascript Google wraps around simple text. My plan is to convert everything to some flavor of Markdown, but parsing this mess is not going to be exactly easy. I appreciate that the goal of this backup was to allow me to host it "as is" somewhere else - with no possibility to edit it, which seems rather useless. What would be really nice is to also get a zip file with some simple Markdown pages that include user editing (font sizes, bolding, etc), without everything being wrapped in Google's Javascript.

rurban 6y ago

Hi Matt, What was the rationale for this project? The joy of destruction?

mattzito 6y ago
Classic Sites has been around for a very long time (since 2008), and we've been working to make new Sites a better, more modern, more maintainable place to create and host websites. The vast majority of users are choosing to create their sites with new Sites, and the vast majority of current classic sites receive no edits and no traffic. We first announced this gradual plan in 2017, with an update in 2019, and now we're providing the detailed plan. The goal was to provide adequate notice for people to figure out whether migration, export, or deletion of their classic sites makes the most sense. EDIT: to the multiple people that are highlighting that 12 years is not a long time, I should clarify. I agree that 12 years in Internet time is not a long time, but it is a very long time in "how websites work" time. One of the big challenges in the website builder space, something that Google. Wix, Squarespace, have all dealt with - is that when a user publishes a website, there's an expectation around the fidelity and look-and-feel of that website. The data model and architecture for how you represent a rendered page, how you render embedded content, all are very dependent on how browsers work at that time, and the maintenance of those things can become very challenging. There was a big shift about ~7 years ago, moving away from a "pixel perfect" layout/raw html approach (Wix, Old wordpress, SQSP 5, Classic Sites), to one where there's some sort of grid-and-box approach where the render is responsive, there's reflow, there's padding and spacing and styling relative to the browser experience. It separates out content from layout to a certain degree in a way that is much more future-proofed and modern. This is how Wix ADI, Squarespace 6+, Wordpress Gutenberg, and new Sites work. For all of those transitions, there was a platform shift, that required a complete rework of how the system works. My point about "12 years" was that the model of how classic Sites works is 12 years old, and new Sites was intended to match the modern way of how websites are built and delivered.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Externally, as you know, Google‘a reputation hasn’t been great when it comes to maintaining their services. What should have happened is to turn Classic Sites (and new Sites) itself into Squarespace competitor. I just see this as a massive failure of vision and execution. Why didn’t they improve classic sites and added yet another product called Sites? May be I am seeing some internal politics surface as fragmentation of product line.
  - mattzito 6y ago
    Fundamentally, classic sites works differently than new sites. It's basically not possible, for example, to make a classic sites website mobile responsive. That's a table-stakes feature for website builders today. To your Squarespace comparison, Squarespace went through a similar transition - Squarespace 5 worked very similar to Classic Sites, and was replaced with Squarespace 6, which was a complete end-to-end rewrite.
    - fermienrico 6y ago
      Yea, I think Google should continue to revamp things under the same product name. It is giving it a bad reputation for discontinuation of products left and right. Could have called it Classic Sites 2.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        The product name is Google Sites. With the introduction of the new configuration for that product in parallel, “classic” and “new” distinguished the available configuration. Classic now stops being the default and in a little over a year goes away, but the product (Google Sites) stays.
    - dwheeler 6y ago
      > It's basically not possible, for example, to make a classic sites website mobile responsive. Huh? Did that 10 years ago. Perhaps we have a different definition of a "classic site". To me a "classic site" is another name for a static site, that is, a website where the HTML to be served is pregenerated. Static sites are now coming back, not going away. But I always assumed that a website should reflow. Perhaps when you say "classic site" you mean "site that assumes that all users have the same display size". I agree that such classic sites are nonsense today. But they were always nonsense. At no time was there a guarantee of any particular screen size for HTML, and it's always been easy to write HTML that just reflows. If you do that, your site works just fine.
rohan1024 6y ago
Why so rude? You can't blame OP for Google's decisions.
- BillinghamJ 6y ago
  As the product lead on the team, it likely is their decision (not to say that excuses rudeness though)
- fermienrico 6y ago
  I don’t think it’s rude to tell people facts, this person is leading this effort.
- rasz 6y ago
  Google is not sentient, someone inside Google decided to get a promotion by launching a "new thing", at the cost of deleting old content.
abstractbarista 6y ago
It's interesting how some people talk. I run a server for free that people store things on. They become irate when I no longer wish to provide the free service. Is that reasonable? My belief has always been "no". Google could kill off the entirety of GMail tomorrow, and I'd be disappointed, but totally understanding.
- stallmanite 6y ago
  Are you a giant multinational that will need to convince people to store stuff on your server in the future? If not then this doesn’t apply to you so you can happily delete everything on your server.

tuyguntn 6y ago

how are you going to compete with MS office suite or similar, in any enterprise solution space if Google has bad reputation with product maintenance and shutting down products so fast? UPD: I assume Google Sites has lots of customers (we were one of them)

laurencerowe 6y ago

Any chance of supporting arbitrary static sites behind a login screen? You can almost do it with a Google cloud storage bucket but you have to put it behind a load balancer for https and the IAP login gate is not supported for bucket backends making it unsuitable for intranet sites.

mattzito 6y ago
It's a good question - I know we looked at the possibility of a cloud storage bucket, but there were some technical challenges there (possibly what you describe). Do you want to shoot me an email at zito@ and I can try to find someone to answer that question?

unixhero 6y ago

Hi, Why do you (your team) really have do do this? This is digital destruction. It's not about the features you shipped in 2008, and what those look like to a 2020 audience. It's about the content(!) which is part of the human creative endeavour. Thanks for taking questions.

mattzito 6y ago
I think this is an interesting point - I will say that the vast vast majority of these sites (unfortunately I can't disclose the number) have not received edits or even visits for more than two years. To me, archiving those sites doesn't feel like destruction, it feels like backing up unused content and protecting it for the user. From our research, a lot of users don't realize that these sites are still published, and in some cases don't want this content out there in the world. I think it's relevant that people should have control over their own information and what is live on the web. That being said, I hear the feedback, and I'll talk to the team about what we might be able to do, within legal and privacy constraints, to protect published sites.
- cyphar 6y ago
  Sadly, this mentality reminds me a lot of the great GeoCities purge of 2009. Have you considered partnering with the Internet Archive to back up any publicly-accessible classic sites which you plan to purge? Whether or not a site has had visitors recently isn't a fair measure of the importance of those sites -- for instance, there were examples of digital shrines in GeoCities and Yahoo still decided to eradicate them all. It was only thanks to projects like the Internet Archive that we haven't lost that period of internet history just to free up some disk platter space. EDIT: I also am struggling to understand what this means: > To me, archiving those sites doesn't feel like destruction, it feels like backing up unused content and protecting it for the user. What does "archiving" mean here? Will the sites still be accessible or not? Is "archive" here a euphemism for "delete" -- in which case, how is it not like destruction and how is it like a "backup"? I'm not sure most people would consider "rm -rf" to be a backup strategy, but it definitely does have very good storage density.

brajesh 6y ago

I’ve about a dozen Google sites which are just an embedded Google form with a custom script at the back. I tried the conversion tool on a dummy site and it opened a Google doc. I am not sure how an HTML page with embedded Google form with a script will be converted to new Sites.

mattzito 6y ago
If you're comfortable, can you ping me on email at zito@? It's possible the custom script is the issue, but I'd be happy to take a look.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

EamonnMR 6y ago

Do you have a plan to offer backups to the Internet Archive/etc?

Apocryphon 6y ago

Are you at least designing New Sites in a way to make them easier to archive and preserve, after they are scrapped in 2032?

rhizome 6y ago
That would be a feature, so it needs to provide some kind of benefit to someone's career in order to be implemented. This is only for launching the feature, and maintenance is still unlikely.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

naetius 6y ago

Hi Matt, thanks for the AMA-like availability, really appreciate it. One question from me: how would you pitch "new Sites" for a potential new customer willing to use it, but afraid his/her/their content might not last the next "modernization" sweep? In other words: would you try to sell new Sites to a customer that values - and worries about - long term visibility of his/her/their content? If no: what is new Sites' value proposition, in terms of target market? Thanks again.

weejewel 6y ago

Hi Matt. Last time I checked the new Sites didn’t have per-page permissions for a G Suite organization. Is this still the case?

easton_s 6y ago

When are we getting an API for new sites?

prirun 6y ago

I have a Classic Site for Hashbackup.com. The pages are very basic text, with some bolding, italics, font face/size changes. Every page in the zip backup, no matter how simple, is around 59K because of all the Javascript Google wraps around simple text. My plan is to convert everything to some flavor of Markdown, but parsing this mess is not going to be exactly easy. I appreciate that the goal of this backup was to allow me to host it "as is" somewhere else - with no possibility to edit it, which seems rather useless. What would be really nice is to also get a zip file with some simple Markdown pages that include user editing (font sizes, bolding, etc), without everything being wrapped in Google's Javascript.