Google has now announced Google Web Designer a free application for OS X and Windows. Web Designer is a Web app, built in HTML5 that “lets you design and build HTML5 advertisements and other Web content using an integrated visual and code interface.

Using the Web designer’s design view, text, drawing tools, and 3D objects can be used to create content and when you are done with creating your content, the Google Web Designer then produces clean readable HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript.  Web Designer can be used for building interactive single-page sites, for animation and other purposes as well.

Though, it seems like some of the features on the tool are currently available only for ads, the company has said that it plans to expand these features for other purposes in the future.

Google says Web Designer was developed to help advertisers easily create HTML5 ads for the mobile and desktop platforms. What motivated Google to come up with this is that advertisers “didn’t have the tools they needed to easily develop content fit for today’s cross-screen experiences.”  Web Designer, according to the official announcement, aims to be the tool that advertisers can turn too.

In terms of features, the tool comes with all the usual visual design functions. Some of the more interesting one developed by the company for Web Designer includes a  pen tool for free drawing, as well as a timeline to mange all your animation. The tool comes with the ability to create 3D content using CSS3. Packed in with the tool are a bunch of pre-built components for galleries, maps and embedded YouTube videos.

The tool appears to cater for both seasoned coders, as well as amateurs looking to try their hand at web design. For instance, while you could tweak the code by hand, there's also an option to let Google focus on the HTML5 and CSS3 while you focus on... the simpler stuff.

Likewise, you can animate individual elements using layers or, if you don't know what you're doing, you can just animate scene by scene and let Google fill in the blanks. Additionally, you'll find a suite of 3D rendering tools inside, along with illustration features. As for monetizing your site, Google Web Designer naturally integrates with Google's own AdMob and DoubleClick Studio -- no surprise there.

Google specializes in Internet-related services and products.  It is rather odd to see that Google has released a free desktop app that is designed for Mac and PC, without even a version for Google’s own Chromebook.   It’s funny enough that Google made another desktop app outside of Chrome , but what’s even funnier is that it’s essentially a packaged web app, with the full Chromium runtime inside the app bundle.The question is "Why"?