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."

Comments

It was called myWebOs

[rylin]

http://www.communitytechnology.org.nyud.net:8090/d atabases/screenshots/mywebos.gif

Forget Word

[pubjames]

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.