Google Page Creator mirror site on Pagetastic.com

The new Google Page Creator renders mirror pages for your googlepages.com sites on the domain pagetastic.com. Check the links for my site:

Google Pages: hellogooglist.googlepages.com/home

Pagetastic: hellogooglist.pagetastic.com

Go ahead and try it on your own Google Page as well. Perfect mirror, right? Now you can have easier access to your Google Pages without the Google name.

Now for the investigation: The URL Pagetastic.com points to www9.google.com (which gives a Google Server Error). So what is Pagetastic.com? Here's what I've discovered:

The Internet Archive has nada on the domain as it has no real history. A search reveals a few previously published Pagetastic.com pages, probably created by Google testers before the February 23, 2006 release of Page Creator. (A blog entry dated January 21, 2006 uses a pagetastic.com hosted jpeg in its post. The Pagetastic.com site for this user references Stanford, meaning that this person might have had access to Page Creator as a Google tester (by virtue of connections, perhaps). Also, a forum posting dated February 19, 2006 links to a pagetastic site. The site looks like it was created in Page Creator and belongs to Anna Ravenscroft, who is married to Google employee Alex Martelli (with whom she wrote the popular tech manual Python Cookbook). My searching also reveals a link to what is most probably a copy of a Google FAQ page in "beta" that lists a question as: "Why aren't the changes I'm making in Google Page Creator being reflected on my Pagetastic.com site?" The current FAQ edits this to googlepages.com instead of Pagetastic.com.

Looks like Google testers were for the most part obedient in not sharing their private betas, but a few slipped out...

Now, here is the WHOIS lookup info on Pagetastic.com:

Registrant:
Data Docket Inc. (DOM-1367820)
391 N Ancestor Pl.
boise ID 83704 US

Domain Name: pagetastic.com

Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com

Created on..............: 2005-Apr-14.*
Expires on..............: 2006-Apr-14.
Record last updated on..: 2005-Nov-09 15:09:25.

*Looks like Page Creator has been on Google's to-do list or project bonus time for at least a year...

And here is the WHOIS lookup info for Google.com:

Registrant:
Google Inc.
(DOM-258879)
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View CA
94043 US

Domain Name: google.com

Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com

Created on..............: 1997-Sep-15.
Expires on..............: 2011-Sep-14.
Record last updated on..: 2005-Jul-25 20:14:20.

Pagetastic.com is registered using the same company, MarkMonitor, that Google uses for its domain registrations. The similarities end there: Google, Inc. is listed as the actual owner in its google.com registration but in the Pagetastic domain, DataDocket.com is listed as the owner. But DataDocket.com is just an "under construction" site that looks more like Geocities (which is what a lot of people are comparing Google Page Creator to).



A WHOIS reveals that DataDocket.com is also registered by MarkMonitor, but its contact info is a cryptic Japanese address. The relationship of MarkMonitor, DataDocket, and Google has been discussed before. Intelligentsia from the forum discovered at that time that

Data Docket Inc. is a Delaware Corporation that is qualified (registered) to do business in Idaho. It was incorporated 4/17/2002 and registered to do business in Idaho on 11/17/2003...MarkMonitor is a dba for eMarkMonitor, Inc. which is also a Delaware Corporation that is also qualified to do business in Idaho. Both companies have the same corporate officers as reported on the annual reports filed in Idaho.

This information was apparently from state records and so confirms that Google's registrar MarkMonitor is indubitably tied to DataDocket, which seems to be Google's disguise domain. The Googlist's speculation: It could be that some Googler was charged with creating a mirror domain for the Page Creator project and thought that taking "Page" and adding a catchy superlative suffix suited his purposes perfectly. He then registered that page under DataDocket.com, which a user in the forums linked above suggests is used as a registration/management tool for Googlers in their 10% creativity time. This way, Googlers can make their projects live without having them explicitly attached to Google, Inc.

Ordinarily this discovery wouldn't be revelatory as Google does all kinds of backend work to support its sites and software. But, the Pagetastic.com discovery provides 2 useful tools: 1) an instant pagetastic.com mirror for your googlepages.com site with a shorter subdomain URL than yoursite.googlepages.com/home.html and 2) it gives us more solid ground for connecting DataDocket projects to eventual Google releases as discussed above.