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Google & Sun Planning Web Office
astrab writes "According to this post at Dirson's blog, Google and Sun Microsystems are to announce a new and kick-ass webtool: an Office Suite based on Sun's OpenOffice and accesible with your browser. Today at 10:30h (Pacific Time) two companies are holding a conference with more details, but Jonathan Schwartz (President of Sun Microsystems) claimed on Saturday on this post of his blog that "the world is about to change this week", predicting new ways to access software."
Isn't this what Microsoft has been fearing? Isn't this exactly why they went out to kill Netscape?
Between Sun's passionate hatred of Microsoft and Google's competence, it's got to be a bad day over a Redmond.
"the world is about to change this week"
Yes, accessing applications on a remote server. That's certainly a new, world-changing idea.
Except that it isn't.
Seriously, is there a business model for this or is it just a way to lessen Microsoft's dominance?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Thousands of IT people around the world are loosing their jobs as software and computer needs are all hosted in some remote location by application service providers. "We'd love to keep them around", said the CEO of a major Fortune 500 company, "but it's really not that difficult to reboot my little black box that gives me access to everything I need".
So I wonder how long until we can expect to see a similar service from Microsoft.
My lame blog.
According to this post at Dirson's blog..
Um, what? A post on some guys website, no some guys "blog" is now news? Who is this guy and why should we care what he has to say? His site is slashdotted.
Listen, I know there is some crazy love fest going on over Google because people are just *dying* to see MS knocked down a few rungs. Sure, Microsoft needs this, but the problem is with Google. You know what's 100x worse than proprietary formats? Proprietary hosted databases! Google is basically a huge proprietary hosted database application format, and they want to host everyone in the world on *their* platform. It's not "our" platform in the sense that Linux and the BSD's and other open source software create such a feeling.
r ver&btnG=Google+Search ). Then, Google can provide services around those, but the core stack should be something that I can control where I host and control my own data!
How could it be different? Well, Google would distribute their web apps *including* source code as bundles that could be installed on "personal servers" (like on the thousands of dedicated server companies run by smaller, generally independent shops http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dedicated+se
Think of it this way. How many corporations are going to start to standardize on Gmail? Not my company, and I'm happy for that. People, please see through this nonsense. Maybe we really do need the "click to download source" clause in the GPL v3. Otherwise, people will gladly give up their freedom just to see some lame company with an incredible data center suck away all of their freedom and privacy. Google is completely evil.
If they wanted to be good, the proof would be in enabling other people by opening their software stack and allowing for a much more distributed architecture.
First, we had terminals running applications from a centralized computer, then we had the idea that we should move apps off of the centralized computer onto workstations (certainly this was aided by the growth of the workstation/PC technology), and now we're moving our apps back to a distributed model where the web browser is the new terminal. Why is the world changing? Hasn't Sun's moto been "The network is the computer" for a while now????
I like this type of technology from an infrastructure standpoint because it means you don't have to maintain 500+workstations worth of software and patches anymore. Welcome to the future kids!
And I lift my glass to the awful truth which you can't reveal to the ears of youth except to say it isn't worth a dime.
What will be really interesting is how we have to save our files. with my Gmail account over 2.5 GBs right now, it would be pretty sweet if I could work on a school paper in the Linux engineering lab at school and then save (or email?) that file to my Gmail account, and access it from my Window's Computer at home.
Sorry, I like to own software, or at least have free software that resides on my workstation without fear of intervention. Communal software I never really own -- that I use on a temporary "as long as Google feels like it" basis -- sounds a lot like a M$ rental plan. I don't hear Google announcing free-for-life software, nor anything coming close to a trustworthy privacy policy for all the data they collect about me. Google's Achilles heal is its disregard for privacy protections. I won't hand over my keys to the kingdom no matter what "we're not evil" unsubstantiated promises they tell me.
Seriously, is there a business model for this or is it just a way to lessen Microsoft's dominance?
If it lessens Microsoft's dominance, it's a working business model.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Lets look at this from the reality side folks. How many companies are going to allow any data of any sort outside their environment? Not going to happen. How many companies will enforce security policies that all work done at home or on a Mobile device be done on the device itself? Probably Most. How many times will it take for data to be picked off from going back and forth from a portal before some MIS manager gets fired for allowing users to use that service. The MS haters of the world would use tin cans and string to avoid paying MS, but look at the Majority of Licensed Office users, It isnt the home consumer, Its the corporate, If you deal with a Multinational IS dept, You arent going to get a portal for documents through a Security committee, no matter how hard you try.
Web hosted office applications is cool for a few things but not cool for most things.
Do law offices want to create all their documents online, hosted God-knows-where and visible to unknown techs with access to the servers? This would probably be a negligent breach of confidentiality in many cases.
With the exception of Slashdot, most people normally write docs and spreadsheets for a limited audience and would be uncomfortable not knowing who was reading it.
I'll keep a local copy thank you. But if I am on the road and need to do a small non-confidential thing quick, I might consider an online office product.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
... about the fact that this sort of stunt requires decent, secure, low-latency bandwidth? The ASP wannabe's and the Layer 7 people always seem to forget "it's the wires, stupid" and that is the Achilles' Heel. I have faith that bandwidth is coming. The LECs (in the US) may end up being able to point to a revenue stream in order to finance the bonds they'll need to replace the twisted-pair infrasructure. It'll take hundreds of billions of dollars, but, it CAN happen. We NEED it to happen for all kinds of reasons. Partly to end our dependency on oil, partly to decentralize the population, partly to show the 'Net can be financed by something other than pr0n. Ironically, it's this sort of thing that will also drive LU/NT/Alcatel/JDSU stock back up. Too bad the revolution's coming 5 years too late.
This is going to HURT them a LOT.
Let's not get ahead of the game. This is only if it takes off, which will be decided by the market and will sure be a slow process.
Besides, who wants to be deprived of all its documentation every time DSL is down?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Most likely. Google makes their money by providing stuff for free and making money off advertising. They make a lot of money doing it.
Back in the days of Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, this practice was extremely annoying; you got half the screen filled with colour animated generic ads. Google proved that if you used targetted ads you could replace half a screen worth of ads with just one single group of text advertisements. I suspect they'll do something similar for an office suite, perhaps with the ads targetted to the content of your document.
In response to something that, had MS done it, you would have shrieked like a banshee, all you can come up with in argument is "a video game did it", and "Microsoft probably does it", and then some lame-ass strawman argument about Hawaii that insinuates that the US is a big bully. Your logic fails to impress...
So it's going to be good because it's non-MS? I don't see how this is going to take off when native versions of StarOffice that run on several platforms have not. Not even the free OpenOffice that will do almost all of what this does has truly harmed Redmond. This is just another stab by Sun at their "thin-client" future where they lock us in harder than Microsoft ever could except we'll need a fat client to run the browser that will be rendering this DHTML UI. Unless it's Java then we're screwed. Perhaps they're just going after the Google cool factor? I can't wait for the free Google "beta" that will lock everyone out of their documents the day they unveil the subscription model from Sun ;) Isn't this what we all feared from Microsoft's Office .NET scheme that never took off?
They'll lose here. Google gives it's products away for actually free and is tons better at running an ad-based business than MS is. MS can't use their typical predatory pricing schemes to kill google, unless they start paying people to use their software.
Of course, they can always leverage their windows monopoly to try to do kill google. Still, if everything is web-based and platform agnostic, that will be harder than it used to be. The insidious bit is that google inherently runs on their software (IE), and there's nothing they can do to stop people from going to google's site. It's not like with Netscape, and they could pay OEMs to keep Netscape off the desktop.
Imagine a web-based office application that could be used from anywhere, and also allowed you to download a platform-agnostic (likely Java) offline editor. You could access your documents anywhere, take them with you, and edit them anywhere. Key to success would be a method of integrating the offline document when you bring it back online - integrated (but transparent and seamless) version control would be critical there.
Now HERE is where the real kicker is. Google could sell this system to companies so they could run it on their own network. Think MS Exchange for documents, only functional. This would inherently integrate backups, and it would allow tons of collaboration benefits that can only be dreamed of now. This is such a no-brainer I'm legitimately surprised MS hasn't done something like it.
I think this is doable. If they pull it off, it could seriously threaten MS.
Maybe VNC, but Java X, I can't imagine it ... X is fine on a LAN but on the net ... ouch ... every mouse movement would bring the connection to a grinding halt. I wonder if this *might* be a basic browser plugin like MS-Word Viewer. I can't imagine that they would have rewritten OO in Java like some other posters have suggested ... way too much work.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Besides, who wants to be deprived of all its documentation every time DSL is down?
On the flip side, who wants an 'offline' version on their home computer (regular OpenOffice) and another version that can be accessed anywhere where there's a web connection? No worrying about whether the right software is available elsewhere like at the library to open your .odt files or whatever.
Someone already took an open source operating system and slapped a pretty GUI on it, that was Apple. But I agree, google might do the one thing Apple has left to do: be hardware independent.
I don't know about a Google OS, but I wouldn't be surprised if Google replaced all of our day-to-day software with complex AJAX sites, making us not need anything else, other than a browser and possibly a hard drive to save sensitive information. (everything else will probably be on Google's server, making it even easier to publish stuff you want to go public with)
The opportunity Google has with this, is you can have an entire workstation that is not only hardware independent, but Operating System independent as well. I can check gmail just fine in linux, windows, and MacOSX and have the same experience on all 3. Why not do something similar to that for all desktop applications?
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
Google could just ensure that their test team is testing major vendor's hardware like Dell, HP, etc. After all, if you're talking about business and joe user functionality, you don't need to focus on 3D acceleration and such.
Google could just sink their cash into Novell/SuSE, RedHat, or Mandriva and provide a bundle that already works. Oh, wait, that's right -- you can already get Linux bundles with Java, OO/SO, etc.
So what's the "new" aspect you're suggesting, other than Google becoming involved in the marketing and distribution? What precisely is it that we need for a desktop GUI that isn't already in KDE and/or Gnome? 3D alpha-transparency spinners? Corona effects for the "glint" off metallic 3D lettering?
What Google could really provide in this area is some funding to improve the hardware support and configuration/maintenance utilities for components like configuring 3D support, adding/removing software, etc. I'm not talking about yet another front-end for RPM or APT, but some real improvement in reducing dependencies and manageability.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Some people here are suggesting that this will turn into an online office app that pushes targeted advertising based on the contents of your document. I don't think this is the way it is going, but if it is then it is a BIG mistake for Google.
How in the world would something like this get past corporate legal teams? I would worry about a massive leak of intellectual property or other sensitive information if the document I was working on is being evaluated for content across the public internet...there is no privacy in an application like this. Even if the data is encrypted, Google could potentially have a copy of every document and change to every document I write even if I never actually save it to Google's servers. How is this any better than spyware or keystroke loggers? No way they would make money off something like this in the corporate world, and I personally would never use it on my home system either.
Are you saying that if I discovered the secret of eternal youth, then that wouldn't change the world, simply because it's not a new idea, people have been looking for it since the dawn of time?
No. The difference in your (poor) analogy is that people were searching for the secret, but did not find it, whereas you did. With respect to client-server technology, it has been done for years already. Thus, implementing an office suite over the Internet is no different than implementing it over, say, a LAN. The "secret" has already been found.
Just because it's already been thought of doesn't mean that an implementation won't potentially be interesting.
I didn't say it wasn't interesting. I said it wasn't new.
This will never catch on at a lot of organizations who will never agree to document content being uploaded to / created at a third-party site over the internet (yes -- even if it is 'can-do-nothing-wrong' Google).
As a company I would be worried about [1] customer information [2] my own intellectual property (process methodologies, templates, whatever) [3] confidential information (strategies, minutes), being processed on some third-party site.
NOTE: Some of the above content does flow unencrypted over internet e-mail when sent to external domains. But then mailing such documents to an external domain is unusual and is (or can be) monitored.
- YoGiX
Personally, I think Google's "beta" GMail is not so much an experiment in large email, but an experiment in how in _reliably_ providing large amounts of remote space for purposes just like an web-based office suite -- so perhaps you will "officially" be able to do just as you said in the near future.
Shortly before StarDivision sold itself to Sun, they announced a server-based StarOffice product (was it StarPortal?) that may have been similar to this. Does anyone else remember it, and wonder if bandwidth and technology (AJAX?) have finally made it usable over the Internet (as opposed to just over one company's network)?
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
'"Fat client"? You need a "fat" client to run a browser? Please...'
Not forgetting, of course, that all this is based on AJAX. That is, HTML, CSS, Javascript/ECMAScript, which aren't "owned" by any one vendor. The day Google starts producing (i) the majority web-browser browser with (ii) proprietary extensions is the day we have to worry in the slightest about vendor lockin.
And the day Google habitually charges a subscription fee for any of its mainstream services (go on, name one) is also the day we can even start worrying about them becoming the next Microsoft here.
This isn't about vendor-lockin. This is about taking away Microsoft's competitive get-out-of-jail-free card, their monopoly over the majority development API (the Windows API).
Once a full-featured (hell, even half-way decent) MS Office compatible office suite doesn't need the Windows API, there's no hard requirement for most businesses to use Windows. In fact, the ease of adminning/free-ness/lack of installation requirements of a web app means there are very compelling reasons to make the switch.
The reasons Star/OpenOffice haven't taken off are:
(i) Marketing: Nobody (apart from us geeks) has really heard of them.
(ii) Trust: Very few companies have the kind of big-name-brand trust CEOs (erroneously) have for Microsoft).
(iii) Hassle of administration: There are no practical obvious admin advantages in switching from one desktop app to another.
However:
(i) Everyone and his grandma have heard of Google these days, and they could (should they wish to) likely amass a marketing budget on the same scale as Microsoft's, at least for one product launch.
(ii) Google, although a relative newcomer, is now sufficiently ubiquitous and useful that it's rapidly gaining (if it hasn't already) big-name-brand recognition.
(iii) Switching from a desktop app to a web app, however, is a no-brainer. Especially for overworked and underfunded IT departments the world over.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Exactly my thoughts. If I remember correctly, Microsoft makes much more money off Office than Windows, but they have to keep producing Windows because that helps maintain their grip on Office users. I'd wager that support costs for an OS are way higher than support costs for an app, even one as large as Office. If MS could drop their OS the company would probably be much leaner and profitable, but they can't do that or they risk losing control.
If Google was to release something, it would be smartest to release something that works on Windows, Linux and OS X. Let the support for the OS, where the biggest headaches come from, to someone else. That makes the most business sense to me.
... They're not developing a Web based OS after all. :oP
As part of the agreement, Sun will include the Google Toolbar as an option in downloads of the Java Runtime Environment from Java.com,
mkay great, but why is this newsworthy?From the early reports (from Google News, of course), it seems that the announcement is you will be able to get the JRE from Google alongside things like the toolbar and so on, and there was announcement about "working together to promote" things like OpenOffice, etc.
It'll be interesting to see if this helps Sun get Java on more Windows desktops. I'm sure it will help get more OpenOffice installations out there, but (and here comes the karma killing part), I'm not sure that is an instant win for OpenOffice, nor is it the "death knell" for Microsoft Office either.
This is a big test for OpenOffice with a more general audience, and MS Office has done a lot to standardize the office suite interface, and I think OpenOffice is proof of that (it looks and feels like MS Office, and that's not a bad thing). But, it will be interesting to see if the rougher edges in OO are polished off enough to get people to switch and stay.
As for switching from MS Office, that's a harder battle. MS has got some compelling stuff in the way of collaboration and established training. Also, Office is often a interesting platform for third-party development. I think MS has got a few tricks up it sleeve yet. I think MS is trying to establish and solidify its very broad corporate base.
As for home, well, it will be interesting to see how MS responds there. For one, one could expect an expansion of "Work at Home" licenses for companies to get their employees MS Office at home for cheap.
Frankly, I don't want MS Office to die. I don't want to be forced into using OpenOffice any more than being forced to use MS Office, but now, if I had to choose, I'd got with the one with the long track record. (Eek! I said it. The flames await me.)
There are assumptions going on here that such an office suite would have to be accessed and loaded up via the Internet whenever you want to use it, and your personal documents would be placed online on Google's servers. But maybe it's not going to work exactly like that.
Maybe the applications are downloaded, cached to your hard drive. So whenever you go to, for the example, the word processor, it simply loads up what is already cached on your drive first. If you're online, then it will check for updates to the program. If you're not online, then you just use the word processor in your browser window like any other offline word processor.
As for your personal documents, perhaps you can save files to your own system and will have the option to save to an online folder. The attraction to save online would be to have your documents accessible from whatever Internet-enabled computer you use, and for online collaboration.
This would not be a game that Microsoft would want to play since they could spend a ton of effort only to see their hole patched without anybody even noticing. Not to mention that since Google relies on widely used features that are support by many browsers, breaking a Google web app will likely break many other web apps. The providers of these other apps probably don't have the resources to patch IE problems as quickly as Google does. So that could be another dangerous risk to take, suddenly giving IE a reputation of breaking lots of random websites every time you do a Windows Update. Those same sites will probably work just fine in Firefox or Opera and the providers of those apps will suddenly have a very good reason to advertise this fact!