THE WEB DEVELOPER'S JOB: FOLKLORE & FACT

"Google released the first public beta of its Google Pages service Wednesday, allowing users who signed up for the service in January and February to begin creating personal websites using an easy-to-use, browser-based tool. The service gives each user 100 MB of free storage space on Google's servers. To use the Google Page Creator tool, users must have an existing Google account. However, only those who signed up early (in January and February) to use Google Pages have access to the current beta. No new signups are being accepted at this time, Google said. The company is expected to open Page Creator to more widespread use over the next few weeks." [via /.]

Does Google's Pages Service, and similarly-positioned free web-based services (think weblogs at large), point to a not that distant era in which a web developer's role will be confined to rather "theoretical" contributions - such as information architecture or usability evaluation or even conceptualising the easthetical dimension of the site - to the process of developing a business-orinted website? What does the class think?