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Google Office Still in the Wings?
Rob writes "Ajax Office, a proposed project to create an open source, web-based suite of office
applications, has fallen by the wayside. But the project's founder Paolo Massa is
convinced that not only will there be successful open source projects in the space, but
that it is only a matter of time before the likes of Google or Yahoo! launch a web-based
office suite of their own - going up against Microsoft Office but in the online sphere.
"If you think about it, it would mean having access to your office
documents from any browser," he told Computer Business Review, outlining his view
that a provider could enable the creation and storage of office documents on their
web servers. "I think someone will do this within a year," he said."
http://www.communitytechnology.org.nyud.net:8090/d atabases/screenshots/mywebos.gif
I would prefer to keep my documents secure and local. And I have Open Office to solve the open source office suite issue. (If only they could get vba in it)
Who would want to keep their Buffy/Faye lemons...err, important business documents on someone else's server?
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
OpenOffice.org is a passable imitation of Microsoft Office, but I think it would be really great if someone rewrote everything in JavaScript and let me run it inside a web browser instead of a mature desktop operating system.
For more information, click here.
And a Google car, a Googledog and I want to clone myself on Google; Google Self.
You bet your software pirating ass I would! Provided it was SSL enabled anyway, one thing that chaps my hide is that all these free email clients don't have any security on them. That sort of keeps me from using goggle mail for anything but fluff email.
But a full blown web office suite that was an online repository for my data. That's smart. I really hope that someone can get this to production, and have an easy was to do an import of old office stuff that actualy works without losing formatting and whatnot.
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Why is this article getting play on Slashdot?
It's just an interview with someone who tried to build a Web-based office suite and couldn't pull it off. Then the guy speculates that "someone else will do it within a year" with absolutely zero evidence for that contention other than his gut feeling -- he doesn't claim to have talked to any company (Google included) about their plans. Then the journalist takes the guy's wild speculation and stretches it out to Google being the ones who will do it "within a year".
In other words, it's completely unsourced speculation. There's not even enough fact there for it to qualify as "rumor"!
It's bad enough that it's running on CBR's blog, but why does Slashdot just pass along the article, complete with wildly misleading headline? Aren't "editors" supposed to be more about critical thinking than regurgitation?
Oh, I forgot, this is Slashdot. Never mind.
Read my blog.
From dumb terminal to workstation, back to dumb terminal... ah, the odd cycle of computer technology.
Thin, web-based clients have been a good idea for a long time. As for security, it's obviously a solvable (solved) problem. I guess this might actually take off with ubiquitous broadband connections etc. I hope so, I believed it was a valid threat to the MS monopoly already when SUN raved about it ten years ago.
http://www.eyeos.org/
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
It's you. HTML Area is not a standalone app, and only relaces the tag.
This would probably unleash, in the Spanish comunity, the same feeling as the incredible Mitsubishi Pajero.
--
Chäïnÿ
Online document editing has many major draw-backs
1) The "online" bit. A large proportion of office document editing is done "off-line" either in-flight, on trains or in establishments with restricted internet access.
2) Printing - You need much tighter integration between the printer and the browser than currently available, its no good generating an A4 PDF when my printer is A3.
3) Its an ASP - Application Service Provider, there have been a few big successes (SalesForce.com for instance) but mainly they tanked. In the office apps perspective its hard to see the business driver, if its just a cost thing then Open Office would win.
4) What do my clients use? Any browser based solution has to have a standard integration and export to MS Office, this is the normal practice and made doubly so now that Google searches all those files on your desktop for you.
5) What is all the power on my desktop for? Dual Core AMD, 2GB RAM etc etc... Office isn't exactly a performance problem.
ASPing Office was suggested by Microsoft and it tanked, its been suggested before and it tanked. I think Google are spot on to not continue funding an idea that has tanked several times before.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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Where I work, everything that gets stored on the hard drives at work is immediately considered For Official Use Only and most companies that do business with DoD or other Government agencies have very strict rules on information storage (classification notwithstanding). If a web-based Office Suite were to succeed, there would have to be major security for it to be considered for use by most of the US Government and it's many (many) contractors. It's possible, but whoever tried to implement this idea would have to keep in mind that lots of big-name companies are tied by these restrictions.
If one could develop a web-based office suite that met the needs of DoD/Dod contractors, then I think a lot of them might go for that idea. It would allow a military unit in Iraq and a command post at Ft. Bragg to view/edit their files without having to worry about transmitting them back and forth; likewise for contractors who have to travel all over the country. I know some contractors who travel 100+ days/year, so having a central repository of files would be excellent for them. I think if the security needs can be met, web-based office might just work. It'll be interesting to see if anyone can actually implement it though.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
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If I was going to implement "Google Office" I would do it with Java Swing or maybe Macromedia Flex. The idea of implementing an Office suite with HTML, Javascript, and AJAX sounds like the makings of one nasty, ugly, kludgey mess of a GUI.
Sam
http://www.writely.com/
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
By far the best on-line applications are made by 37 Signals. Google should just buy them - makes much more sense than some of the other stuff they've brought recently and would probably be much cheaper.
I bet you mean Kupu or something like that :)
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
when he became afraid that Netscape could do this and decided to kill them before they did.
Gates is nothing if not far-sighted.
Disclaimer: only one (of five) of my computers runs ANY Microsoft product (Windows 98SE) -- and that one runs WordPerfect, not Office. RTF is fine with me.
Also, I don't think it's ok to expect $400 for a word processor, email program, and spreadsheet program, no.
Get off your high horse and apply for a job at the SBA.
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Do you really want government officials, Masters and PhD students, top scientists and engineers, buisnesses (and business employees) etc... to use a web-based office application?
That will never ever happen. Think of the security! What if some hacker hacks away and downloads tons of sensitive documents?
As for Google Office, we all know that they have a bit of a shady GMail privacy policy. Now you want me to trust them with my personal documents?
Imagine a service in the future offered by Google that gives employers the tool to find out more information on a specific person. Imagine the amount of information that can be deduced from all the things you did on Google. They can know a lot about "who you are", your personality etc... just from all the interactions you do with Google itself. Six years ago, everyone didn't realize that Google will be able to search every nook and cranny of the Internet, and that it'll be able to dig up your personal message board posts you thought would be too hidden from a search engine.
You have no idea what the future holds in terms of the advancements in data mining technologies.
I cannot trust Google with my documents... the buck stops right here, right now.
To make the next step in office development suites, we really must completely forget about how Microsoft Word works!
OpenOffice and the other open source office suites all hold themselves back terribly by trying to deal with the Microsoft formats and copying the interface. Guys, doing it that way you will always be playing a frustrating game of catch-up, and you'll never take off.
The next generation office suites I believe will (should) be 1) web based, 2) simple 3) have collaboration built in from the roots.
Come on guys, just stop copying Microsoft Office. It's boring, time consuming and doomed to fail. To compete with Microsoft, forget them.
I had no idea gmail was SSL enabled as an option. YOU ROCK!
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As much as some people (myself included) would love for Google to kill MS, its not clear that Google has a business rationale for entry into the Office market.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
To be consistent, it should really be called JA Office. Ajax is a nonsensical buzzword.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
I can just imagine it now. Little Billy is writing his assignment the night before it's due, and his internet drops out. He tries to reconnect. No good. He fails his assignment. Thanks, but with how untrustworthy my internet connection is (it stays up for about 90% of the time, but it seems the more I need the internet connection the more likely it is for the internet to drop out) I'll stick with my computer (which fails enough as it is).
To me this does not sound like a plausible commercial idea as of yet. The one place I do see this as being possibly successful would be the corporate sector. You could just buy a small server that ran everybodies office application on the corporate intranet. No need for massive amounts of installs and it would have some interesting ways of document sharing.
... because with it you can create nicer web applications with existing browsers, but why do so many people seem to think of it as the future? It is a mess of technologies and not nearly as powerful as e.g. Java applets or .net 'applets'. Besides, I don't want to edit my documents in a web browser I cry to regularly when I loose the text I'm editing in MediaWiki.
.net pervasive, smart-clients/applets will be a much more attractive technology for building complex web (remote) applications.
I know it is a sin to say so, but when Microsoft (and Novell/Mono) has succeeded in making
If you are going to be a lemming then find another group of developers to follow than the web-heads. They're a sad bunch that are somewhat disconnected from traditional software development, which means they are learning a lot of old lessons the hard way.
There is absolutely no reason why a web server with this functionality enabled should not be deployed by different organisations with different security requirements. Google itself could offer a free service using context sensitive advertising, a paid for service without...and so create the bandwagon that would get corporates interested. How much would the DOD pay Google for an armed forces wide secure document solution? How much would a large corporate pay to be sure its employees were able to work on shared documents efficiently without all that emailing of stuff around the place, loss of version control, islands of secret knowledge? So far, document management systems have failed to deliver on simplicity, efficiency etc., but the opportunity must be out there.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Do you really want government officials, Masters and PhD students, top scientists and engineers, buisnesses (and business employees) etc... to send mail over the internet?
That will never ever happen. Think of the security! What if some hacker hacks away and downloads tons of sensitive letters?
Clearly the only sensible option is to send mail on paper via the postal service, anything else would be madness.
As for Google Mail, we've seen the way they index all the information you post to the public internet.
Imagine a service in the future offered by Google that gives employers the tool to find out more information on a specific person, just by typing your name into a box! Clearly if they started a mail service they'd do the same thing and make all the letters you store with them publicly available to anyone that asks for it.
Six years ago, I was too stupid to realize that Google will be able to search every nook and cranny of the Internet, and now everytime I go for a job they find out I used to abuse message boards under the nick l33t w4nx0r and now I have to post anonymously all the time. Its an invasion of privacy I tells ya.
From my perspective, the first thing that needs to be done is add Calendaring to something like Google Mail. I think web based editors are feasable (check out FCKeditor - a lot of functinality is already there), but a calendaring system makes a heck of a lot more sense as a web based app than an office suite. It would seriously challenge Outlook. And Outlook is one of the things keeping a lot of companies on Windows.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Speculation for Nerds: Stuff that might matter some day.
Why?
Do you want to wait for MEGABYTES of jscript to be downloaded before you can type a letter?
Instead of JavaScript why not just use Java? the complaints about waiting for the jre will be nothing compaired to the download time of an entire application the size of Word.
Then let's talk about speed. JavaScript is not optimized for speed. For a large app that could become an issue.
I know lets use UML to design it, code it in Ajax, and us an XML back end! It could be an an enabling paradigm.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I see a awful lot of comments about how people would preffer to keep their data local or how the browser is just to limited to really use for an office system of any sophistication but no consideration of other options. Like for example having the option of not storing your documents online... or storing them both on and off line. There are other options to either/or scenarios.
I can't argue that web browsers are terribly limited in this respect though. Which is why I really think the answer is the next generation. There is a theory floating about that google is considering a web providing service... sometimes called a parrallel internet. Well how would one access it? How about portal software? Something similar to AOL but something truly unique under the hood instead of being a cheezy skin over default system utilities? IE Google makes its own browser system that includes HTML rendering but which also goes beyond. Something similar to Google Earth only instead of rendering a 3d globe it is a system designed for word processing and spreadsheets. With a large offline component that also uses online functions as needed... and perhaps caches the most commonly accessed ones to speed up the process and to deal with Lag. It may even allow for a full offline functionality that syncs up with its online counterpart as available.
Even without a new 'browser' per say lets just say that Google Office is similar to Google Earth. The on and off line components are blended in and toss in a embedded firefox component that you can switch to if so desired for one stop shopping... IE tabs that include your office documents your working on as well as your net windows... system command line ? MP3 playing ? file browser ? its not to long before your talking about an OS portal... then if you make something like a Knoppix distro for sampling it and allow a full install you can design a system from the ground up to blur the line between on and off line in a way that really has yet to happen for the masses. They can use Windows install base as a stepping stone. If they can get to where people are just using windows to access the google progs then a full up OS replacement may then be possible on a scale that would have Blamer tossing a few more chairs around.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
The thing is, we've all been waiting for this since it was touted at the 'next big thing" about 5 years ago. Either no one wanted to jump in and actually make it happen or the interest was sketchy. I'm guessing a little of both. The reason Google is named here is because they're have the expendable cash to throw at this and see if it sticks. It won't. Office on the Web is just not the answer. Yes, it may work out for the home user or even SOHO, but certainly not for enterprise offices. Security will become a huge issue. If not in reality, Microsoft and their PR machine will talk about the security of online apps. How can they do this and at the same time try to push their own Web apps? Easy, they're Microsoft. This is a solution looking for a problem. The supposed problem is MSOffice and it's high cost. However, people want to replace it with a product that they can own.
Seems nifty and all. Why doesn't it have a web browser ? Come on an OS without a browser, just wont make it. A browser would make it able to run, this new online operating system. With office suit and all, although it doesn't have a browser.
I just had a listener post his experieneces with web-based project management, and basecamp was among those he tried, with not a very good opinion of it. Based on the few remarks about basecamp, I'm rather surprised that a company so apparently publicly devoted to 'usability' overlooked such basic things.
http://fireboxstudios.com/news/newapp
creation science book
No thanks. Those programs need to be here and run here thank you very much.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
> Is it me, or is htmlArea basically a word processor already?
Wow! A talking word processor!
Google google is fine for google, however for web apps google google would be very easy for Google. But what about Google Google? Google google google would be Google's to google. Consider:
Google Google - the google of the google google.
Right, that should cover this week's upcoming tech news pretty succinctly.
A good case of a premature vision, like Vannevar Bush's memex.
I'm using DSL. My friends in the "real world" are about 1/3 DSL, 1/3 cable, and 1/3 dialup. Wifi isn't ubiquitous. I can't even trust my email provider not to change its domain name once every two or three years. People using Apple's "iDisk" (WEBDav-like online "disk") for backup run into scary snags every year or so.
It's probably a pretty good guess that in ten years, connectivity will be fast, reliable, and maybe even secure enough--and the average life expectance of Internet companies long enough--that this will all seem as silly as going to a CD-ROM rather than going online to look up an encyclopedia article. But that's not true now.
"I can call office suites out of the vasty Internet." "Why, so can I; or so can any man: But will they come, when you
do call for them?"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Oh yeah... I'm not the target audience.
Why will people use GoogleOffice? I'd say its because they understand web browsers, they trust google, but most of all because they can't afford MS Office. Why not use OpenOffice? Why not use Thunderbird for gMail. People don't because they are afraid of installing software because they might break their computer, or because it doesn't work first time out of the box. I believe given the choice between installing an office suite or going to a website that does almost the same thing, the web site will win out.
Its the same reason people use Internet Explorer, Windows Messenger and Outlook Express: it is the path of least resistance.
If computers were packaged with Thunderbird, Firefox and OpenOffice there is no question in my mind that the use of these apps would sore. Look at Macs. I know a fair few Mac users and they all use Mail, Safari and Pages. Why? Because they came preinstalled, and it was easier to learn these apps than convince me to install the MS equivalent for them.
Buying and installing software is the domain of geeks. Left to their own devices, Joe Sixpack wouldn't install, upgrade or buy any software if there was a simpler alternative. Web services let someone else do all that for you, which is great, except that HTTP and HTML both suck for this use. If GoogleOffice is successful, maybe it could be the driver for a web application protocol and language that is purpose built for this type of situation.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Hilarious!
I don't get the fuss about this. So, they can write a simple office application in Javascript. They can't rely on having an internet connection present, otherwise no one will use it, so you're basically looking at a scripting-language-based, non-native suite with some remote file storage for backup. Hardly world-changing, is it?
Many a DotBomb went bust with tons of data iretrievably lost on their servers. You can't do business without trust, but you should take reasonable risks and storing corp data in a nebulous cloud is perhaps not very appropriate, unless of course, if the data isn't really worth saving in the first place. I once encountered a Realty office where the lady typed everything up on a Win95 PC, she would print the docs directly and never saved anything. She simply said: "Why bother?".
Oh well, what the hell...
The lack of javascript speed is an issue. This can be addressed by using Java applets, as you point out (correctly). It would be interesting to have something like QT installed on the client so that you can use the Javascript to script together high performance components. If this could be installed with 'one click' over the web, it would be pretty easy (like installing a JRE). This doesn require some general purpose components to be installed on each computer, but both QT and Java are cross-platform. QT's C++ is even faster than Java. It would be pretty cool to see Trolltech 'give away' the client components (under GPL) and license server software for corporate applications.
Does anyone know how much effort has gone into optimizing Javascipt? Do browsers have JIT for Javascript, for example. What is the potential to speed up Javascript, other than the obvious 'wait a few years for 20 GHz quad core with 16 GB of 5 ns RAM'.
Think global, act loco
This is a bad idea for 2 reasons.
The first reason is from a technology point of view. It's possible to kludge together webpages so that the illusion of an interactive application, but it will be just that; a heap of kludges. With our super fast PCs, it works just about fast enough for simple interactions, provided the latency to the server is not too high. In 20 years of networked GUIs, no good standard for interactive remote user interfaces has emerged; X is too verbose, HTML is too static, and PicoGUI seems to have died.
The second, and probably more important, reason is from a user point of view. You don't want to have your documents only accessible to a program on some other organization's computer. It's bad enough when the documents you store on your own computer are in a proprietary format you're not allowed to know how to process; not even having access to the documents without intermission of a 3rd party is much, much worse. Not just because of the huge potential for lock-in, but also because of the reliability and security aspects.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Is it no about time somebody put some thought into how an Office Suite integrates with the network.
No particular andvances in network aware word processing seem to have been made since Wang OIS 20 years ago.
We have monolithic Office Applications, both closed source and open source, re-inventing the wheel through the browser interface seems like a big waste of time.
How about a Client Server Word processor, with the ability to check out chapters, a central indexing application, centrally contolled template library, and library access contol and centralised reporting on who has opened and editing documents.
http://www.writely.com/ - The REAL story is how fast AJAX is changing the web app landscape.
AJAX is the quiet revolution that Google has been lighting a fire under and I doubt MS has anything as nimble or elegantly simple then anything Google might be brewing. VISTA may have some tools to compete at a very basic level... maybe!
In the meantime... there's Writely... which looks pretty mature for a BETA AJAX application.
Welcome to Web 2.0!
...and the browser interface in general. That's been my major problem with web apps. One minute you're working, the next you hit backspace outside of the form and the page disappears.
otherwise, they will fade into history like the many java office suites promoted during the dot-com boom
If someone made this OSS, then coudln't people be free to put it on THEIR server? I don't see any reaosn why we couldn't run the thing on your server and then just access it from anywhere. Wouldn't this be perfect? Security and web access?
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Yahoo Mail already has a Calendar (like Microsoft Outlook) and Notes (like Microsoft NotePad) added a couple more apps doesn't seem far fetched.
I pay $7.95 a month for a gig of server space from a reasonably reliable host. If I cared about having my documents available everywhere I went, I would put them there. If I didn't have that, I would put them on a CD, a flash drive, or a floppy disk and carry it with me.
Maybe I'm missing the point, but an online office suite sounds like a really stupid idea. What's the benefit over a regular office suite, a cheap host and an ftp client?
I really wish people would remember that just because you can do something, doesn't make it a good idea.
Please? That's the best joke I've heard today.
OK, it's java applets instead of Ajax, but the main advantages and disadvantages are the same, aren't they?
"If you think about it, it would mean having access to your office documents from any browser,"
And if you think about it some more, it would mean that anyone other could also have access to your (and everyone else on the server 's) office documents...
There still is one thing i miss: A *reason* why it's better to have an interpreted office suite than one written in plain C++?
Is is the 99% overhead of XML? The 90% overhead of JavaScript? The ton of possibly insecure attack points? Or even the incompatible slow and buggy inflexibility of browsers?
Or just "because we can"?
Then why don't we build an operating system on top of javascript that can run xml-"binaries" and run Java applets in the AJAX-JVM of its built-in firefox, to create the coolest virtual integrated rapid environement for blog writing (VI RapE-BloW)?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
an open-source Office Suite with my company. We have been planning for a long time and we have started work on our word processor , calendar , address book & slideshow.
What you say is absolutely true. One thing I would mention, though, is that for the most part the email traveling to your GMail account is riding with a sea of other email, taking various routes. It is not always interesting to a listener along one of those routes, since they don't necessarily care about what you are saying in your email.
However, at a public hotspot, it is more likely that people *do* care about what you are saying in your email. Conferences are one example where people are using public wi-fi with many of their competitors within wireless earshot, so to speak. Using SSL to encrypt the last hop is quite useful in this case. This is why Google created the new Google VPN; reading your email with SSL is the same idea, with a less general usage.
If you think about it, it would mean having access to your office documents from any browser
"I swear professor, my internet connection went down last night and I couldn't work on my project." Or, how about this, Google ads in your document which uses relevant text words from the document. Can you see any businesses utilizing this technology when their proprietary information is being dissected?
THe biggest problem, other then privacy, of Internet based programs like this is what happens when you can't connect to the server. You are in a world of hurting. How many people have played online games and not been able to connect at one point or another - frustrating, now imagine if it's for a project due the next day or hour.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I lean the same way. However much I love gmail I have my POP3 downloads into Thunderbird as a backup (and all my other email addresses redirected to gmail as a secondary backup)
Give me a solution where I can background sync my worldprocessing and spreadsheet documents folder with a web-accessible server, and have an intelligent sync so changes I make on the site propagate to my local copy and vice-versa... and that's something I'd pay for.
Ideally there's be a single allocation of space, much like 30gigs.com described earlier today, which could be used for file storage, online document backup/sync, or IMAP webmail... and web-based access for read, write and edit to all documents.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If you think about it means not having access to your documents unless you have a connection. So much for working on the road in regions with spotty connectivity.
It's here, it's called ThinkFree Office Online.
Actually, they're not the same on two levels. First, people are more comfortable with ad-supported "free" email services. Will people want to see ads while working on a document or spreadsheet. I know I wouldn't and I suspect that most employers wouldn't want their employees distracted by ads (if possible).
Second, and more importantly, I'd argue that words in email are far more likely to be useful for adwords purposes. Emails often talk about the things we plan to do, places we're going, things we own/plan to buy, life events (birthdays, xmas, etc.). These life activities have significant commercial tie-ins. If a friend tells us about a great new product/book/band/vacation spot then its very logical that adwords tied to that item will be relevant, clicked on, and bought from. Office documents don't have this consumption-related immediacy, at least mine don't.
Google's plan may be to eventually capture all your documents and email and "workflow" on their servers, thereby tying you permanently to their world, exposing you to paid adverts and other paid services as they wish. They get total access for data mining.
I think you are right in this regard. The key is whether Office documents contain enough good data to improve advertising performance and whether users will accept ads in the context of Office use.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Look...If you really want to be able to go to any web browser and use Office, just set up GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, or any of those web services that allow you to remote control your computer from a browser with minimum hassle. The performance is fine, you have access to all your files, security is very good, etc.
Eh? I thought the description, as well as Google's other services, would make their Office system a hell of a lot more similar to something like this:
http://www.numsum.com
No downloads or browser plug-ins required.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
I've always wanted automatically placed subject-related ads in my inter-office memos.
Right on the money.
... like the body or the subject!)
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment
RFC2518 and RFC3253 already give you a protocol to make the web editable and you can even version your documents. Have a look at http://www.webdav.org./
So there is no need to invent something new for webbased document management. First servers and clients already exist.
I already have that, its called VNC.. ( running via inetd )
Sure its not for everyone, but with that method you get access to YOUR stuff.. on YOUR machine.. You dont have to trust some abstract company 'out there' with your data. And its free.
Now to be honest i get home via SSH for security, but i could just as easily open up the HTTP ports..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Anyone? Or am I the only person that thinks that web browsers stink as a platform?
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1997 - http://www.sigpc.net/v1/n7.htm Office for Java never got beyond alpha; what happened to it? Isn't this what people want to do? How come people think these ideas are new when Corel and Microsoft activly developed software for Java and never created finished products? -R
It doesn't have to be Java.
http://www.curl.com/
http://www.laszlosystems.com/
How come no one is mentioning gOffice.com? It's not Google, but it *is* a web based office suite. Free for personal use too. Exports to PDF.
Direct away from face when opening.
...but I know it'll be hilariously funny to me when/if Google adds their name to the "everyone uses the OASIS OpenDocument Formats" list and furniture sales spike in Redmond, Washington shortly thereafter...
(I imagine Oracle will do so at some point as well in some of their applications, even if only because imagining the look on Bill Gates' and Steve Ballmer's faces when they do makes Larry Ellison cackle with insane glee.)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
http://biz.yahoo.com/cbsmb/051003/97ee9ea6268242b7 b7d004e11ebe8dcf.html?.v=1
My biggest concern would be the privacy and "ownership" rights of the documents. While gmail is awesome, I _only_ use it for mailing lists. My personal email is handled by a server of my own. I'm not a big fan of having another company have full access to the information in my email, much less any office-style documents.
... :)
Of course, I tend to err on the side of paranoia
RFC2119
OpenOffice (or as I would prefer, AbiWord and Gnumeric) solves the cost issue, and hopefully OpenDocument will solve the lock-in issue.
Google Office might solve the cost issue if it's free (like beer). It probably won't be free like speech, and it will certainly not solve the lock-in issue. Instead of being locked in to MS, one is now locked in to Yahoo, Google, or whomever. These companies will then be free to change their terms as they wish--witness Yahoo Mail: it used to have freebies like POP access, and they now charge for them.
Perhaps an open source Ajax Office would be vaguely interesting. It would still have security and speed issues, but at least then I could put it in a cheap Web hosting account and use it as I please. A proprietary Google Office is not even vaguely interesting, with its security and lock-in issues. This is especially true in the corporate sphere, which is the one that really matters in the office suite market.
Penny - plain text accounting
I don't see it. Your documents lose security and availability.. and you gain, what?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
I predicted it long loooong ago.
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
I would prefer to see a extension that allows office productivty to take place inside the webbrowser instead of inside a web page. A FF extension that allows office productivity, word processing, spreadsheets and presentations would be sweet, and it would allow the user to either upload the files to a public server or to save it locally. XUL is already a very extendable system to build on. I see this as more viable, or perhaps a step in the direction of a internet office suite.
"If you think about it, it would mean having access to your office documents from any browser"
Hell, I don't need a new fangled web-based office suite to do that. All I need is a remote filesytem. Even FTP meets the requirements. Why is everyone so insistant on solving problems that have already been solved decades ago?
Sheesh, just use KDE/KOffice and you get all the network transparency you need. Wouldn't it be easier for Google to implement network transparency for Windows than to write a whole new office suite (with the obligatory nastiness of a web interface)?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The idea of a web based wordprocessing program is that it isn't a desktop application. This is something that would work best in schools, universities, businesses, and the like. It isn't something for the home computer. You don't need a third party hosting your files. The scool or company can host all the files on their server (or a dedicated "word processing" server) and the students/employees can then access their files from anywhere. The documetns are stored on a central server. It eliminates the need to install a desktop application (and the subsequent licencing fees and what not) on each computer, avoids version conflicts; gives the people in charge a way to check the progress of reports, memos, and the like; removes the reliance on any one OS; a propperly backed up server means little to no data loss; and the ability to work from anywhere with net access. Sure there may need to be a way to do typing in an ofline capacity, and maybe a "single user" server package could be made that lets a person type in their browser and store files locally, then those files could be uploaded to the main server at the next convienent time they have net access.
Imagine your SEC 10-K filing with AdWords up and down the margins.
Oh, yeah, this will be popular.
"If you think about it, it would mean having no access to your office documents from any location without internet access," he neglected to tell Computer Business Review, hoping that he would be hired by the likes of Google or Yahoo!
"From dumb terminal to workstation, back to dumb terminal... ah, the odd cycle of computer technology."
Not quite. It's more a spiral than a circle. We're not coming back exactly to the same point as a cycle would. Plus even if we have more web apps? That doesn't mean our "dumb terminals" suddenly become incapable of running local apps if need be.
Nothing says security like archiving all your sensitive corporate documents on a web system like Google's. I'm sure they won't index, archive and search any of the documents.
Even better...if Google builds it maybe Microsoft will use it and then Google can look through all of MS's documents.
And those are just a few reasons why it WON'T catch on. It's been done. It will be done again but it won't become something that is commonly used.
* Si hoc legere scis numium eruditionis habes *
Google has a clear rationale for making Google Office (and GoogleOS). It's called "kill microsoft's cash cow before they use that cash cow to kill us" or in the alternate "make microsoft worry enough about our new office suite/os that they will focus more energy on fighting use there rather than in our key niche.
If google did an office suite, they would do a much better job at pushing it out into the market than sun (no focus/too much of a hardware company) or openoffice (too many nerds, no profit motive). Google could drop a link to their office system on the google home page and pick up at least 500,000 downloads in a few days. Microsoft would absolutely freak at this because office is their real profit engine. Someone else hear was way off about "i won't put my docs on the web" because google office would not require this...it would just enable a section of gmail (perhaps renamed gHome) to store docs IF YOU WANT IT TOO. If goog is smart they will have a desktop version of the software that runs locally etc, and then have a stripped down version that runs fast over the web that enables basic editing/viewing/printing. Online collaberation would be a natural fit with anyone who has a gmail (now ghome) account.
At some point we all commit ourselves to dependence on infrastructure. The data infrastructure is not yet as reliable as the power infrastructure, but it will be soon. Then this won't seem like such a crazy idea.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
ContactOffice http://www.contactoffice.com/ is not an office suite but a central repository for data (documents, contacts, etc.) that you can access from any connected device (computer, PDA, smartphone, etc.). For documents, they provide WebDAV access (with SSL) so you don't need to use the Web interface. They also provide POP3-S client and server. The client device still manages the office app and it works fine this way.
Google + Sun = ????
The Industry Guessing Game Has Begun
That's how I access my Gmail at school. BESS, the awful filtering system used by our school system, doesn't allow us to use "free mail sites" at school (among other things), but it has a [seemingly unfixable] bug in it -- it cannot filter HTTPS/SSL requests, because they're, well, secure. The only solution is to block all https sites. And they won't do that, because some of the sites the teachers and students rely on are SSL. I love loopholes. =)
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