Google has blown a new cloud over Redmond’s way to rain on Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration server – even if it has a ways to go before being recognized as a thunderhead.

The cloud is called Google Sites.

It’s a googlized version of the JotSpot start-up’s wiki widgetry that Google bought 16 months ago on undisclosed terms.

Just plain folk can use it to create, say, intranet web sites – complete with shareable videos, presentations, calendar, links, attachments and documents – in a few clicks without any hovering IT attendants or dedicated hardware and software.

Sort of a “Web Sites for Dummies.”

Sites is now part of Google Apps, and free if you don’t mind ads; 50 bucks a client if you do. Like Apps, the web sites created run on Google’s great labyrinth of servers and storage.

By Google’s count upwards of 500,000 organizations are using Google Apps – a number Google has used for a while now – with 2,000-3,000 coming on a day.

According to initial reviews, disappointed with the Google makeover and what it left behind, the functionally richer, infinitely more complex SharePoint can apparently rest easy in its bed for a while hugging its $4,400 server licenses and its $94-$187 client licenses.

Google, however, has great plans for Sites, positioning it as the foundation stone for other attack services. At some point, for instance, it’ll get social networking skills.

Google rewrote the JotSpot front-end to work with Google Apps.

Sites replaces Page Creator, by the way.