Google just released a web-based mashup creator and hosting environment. The editor accepts HTML, CSS, and Google-specific XML tags. These tags provide access to google feeds such as the Google Calendar and Base. The example we just saw built in front of us took six lines of code and plotted locations on a map. Pretty impressive. This can be hosted at googlemashups.com or you can make a gadget for iGoogle.
It is very similar to Yahoo! Pipes and Popfly in intent, but not in focus or implementation. Of the three web-based mashup creators this one is the least graphical (being almost all text) and is the most developer focused. Google has a history of starting with developers and then making things easier over time. The most obvious example of this in my mind is the evolution of KML’s relationship with Google Maps. Last year at Where 2.0 it was announced that hosted KML could be display in Google Maps. Very dev friendly, less consumer friendly. This was the predecessor to Mapplets (Radar post), a much more accessible way of loading external data sets onto Google Maps.