Google has just launched a new product called Web Elements. See here for details. The product aims to make it simple for webmasters and bloggers to place Google applications on their pages.

Whilst many of these applications have been available to developers for a while, they have never been in a single, easy-to-use package like this. On a single page you can now pick to show Google favourites such as Calendar, Maps, Custom Search, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and receive fresh news content from Google News and YouTube News.

Google has certainly put some thought and effort into the applications. For example, the YouTube news widget lets you choose content from over a dozen news agencies. So far there are a total of eight separate apps, but more are thought to be in the pipeline.

One of the widgets already gathering a bit of buzz (even though it isn’t yet 24 hours old) is the Conversation feature. It allows you to turn your site into a social community where users can comment on any topic you choose to start. Expect to start seeing this on quite a few sites.

Implementation for the most part is simply embedding a bit of JavaScript code, much in the same way as Google Analytics, allowing even novice developers to take full advantage of these widgets.