Google's Web page hosting service closed to new users

The Mountain View, California, search giant describes the free Google Page Creator as a browser-based tool that requires no knowledge of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or any other programming languages.

Google promises that nontechnical users can create, in a matter of minutes, "attractive, functional" Web pages, which the company will then host for free. No software has to be downloaded.

Google all along intended to accept a limited number of users in this early test phase, and it reached that limit within hours of making the service available on Thursday, the company said in a statement. Google expects to resume accepting sign-ups "very soon" and has set up a waiting list at pages.google.com.

The service is, at the moment, a tool for creating individual Web pages, not Web sites, according to Google. Users must have a subscription to the company's free Gmail Web mail service. Google has set a 100M-byte storage limit per Google Page Creator user for pages and uploaded files.