Google now hosts template-based sites: https://sites.google.com/site/sites/ I set one up: https://sites.google.com/site/pelicancruises/

The good news:
• the site looks very OK
• it only took about an hour for me to setup
• I feel like it could look good with another hour or so work
• I could point a domain name to it
• I suspect it ought to do well with Google

There are definitely some things I don’t love about the site. I’d like to be able to make more changes to the templates. I think it’s easy to plug in Picasa pictures and slideshows.

So while I don’t think you’ll find Fortune 400 businesses moving to this anytime soon, I think this is a great starter web site.