Some eyebrows were raised last year when Microsoft announced its Office Live beta service, featuring free email and web hosting for private or commercial users. Of course Google already had the email side covered with it’s successful gmail service, but has recently upped the ante when it recently announced Page Creator beta, allowing users to create web pages from within their browser and host their site with up to 100mb of free space.

When I tried to sign-up earlier today I received this message:

This looks set to become another killer service from Google and nail another thorn in Microsoft’s online ambitions. I’m very worried that a serious conflict of interest starts to emerge whereby an end user is guaranteed higher search rankings on Google if their site is hosted with them? Maybe it’s just me but I don’t it’s a good idea for the democracy of the web for the world’s most used search engine to offer mainstream web hosting?

UPDATE:
Interestingly enough I recently came across this in the FAQs on the Page Creator:

5. Will Google give preferential treatment to web pages created with Google Page Creator in Google search results?

No, we won’t. Web pages created using Google Page Creator will never receive any preferential treatment of any kind in Google search results.

Supposedly I wasn’t the only person concerned about a conflict of interest…