Slashdot Mirror
No Office Suite Google
Simon (S2) writes "Google co-founder Sergey Brin has quashed speculation that the giant ad broker is to introduce a web-based Office suite. "We don't have any plans," he told Web 2.0 conference organizer John Battelle (pictured below). However Brin left the door open a little. Documents would be easier to work with in the future, he promised, but he didn't think a fat client was the way to go. "I don't really think that the thing is to take a previous generation of technology and port them directly," he told Battelle. However distributed thin web applications allowed you to do "new and better things than the Office package and more.""
With all the press they received about it... they should.
I know that many of us thought it would be the first direct attack against Microsoft,
Posted last nite? And here it is this morning? That's like, hours! I can't believe they sat on such an earth-shaking story for so long.
It's Slashdot's way of telling you "fuck off and die, you creepy wanker".
It tries to be less in-your-face to prevent you from being emotionally hurt and having to run upstairs to your mom and crying into her voluptous breasts.
It may not be a full office, but it seams they are planning something...
I don't see any picture below...
I hate it when story submitters just copy and paste from other news articles, not even giving them credit. It occasionally causes phrases that don't make sense, like this one.
It's called customized 404 error message.
Getting sort-of-semi-on-topic, shouldn't the headline be "No Google Office Suite"? What is up with the awkward word order?
And getting really on-topic, the announcement was to be expected. It would be unwise for Google to set up the infrastructure necessary to handle people's word processing. Such a device could be too easily abused, by say, programming macros and using Google's cycles to do general purpose computations on their dime. I'm sure there's a way around that particular issue, but it illustrates the inherent security risks of building web interfaces to massive software suites. Any exposed vulnerability will be exploited for processing power, or worse.
After all, I am strangely colored.
What good is a web based office suite anyway? ( not a rhetorical question...I'm really wondering)
Allowing people to collaborate on the same document online,is already possible in traditional office suites+groupware. And centralized storage of documents is avaliable via, you know, Yahoo Briefcase.
so what exactly would a web office suite bring to the table, aside from the coolness factor?
Sprinkle in some punctuation and it makes sense.
there's more than one way to do me.
It wouldn't need to have macro support. It could be a "portable" openoffice, where you just need to edit an document or spreadsheet then save it quickly, then download it when you come back home and work on it in openoffice.
I don't think Google could compete with a web-based office suite although I am sure there will be web-based office applications... (not as replacements though)
. . . you accidently logged into Slashdot's 'for the blind' section.
But this notion of them as the new Microsoft is just delusional. Journalists have jumped on it because it's a fun story, investors have to explain the ludicrous stock price and Slashbots have because a web-based, subscription-based, proprietary office suite with who-knows-what file formats seems like a fantastic idea if it will involve sticking it to Microsoft.
Look. This is a company with a great indexing and ranking engine, a great backend and a great sense of design and offering value to customers. That's, uh, great, it really is. Google should be proud. But to say that they can just bang out a Javascript-based office suite because you guys think it would be fun is simply nuts. It's not like they have magic powers over there, no matter what the cafeteria serves.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It's Bush's fault.
Google will just be a little later in creating their empire to take over the world.
LOL. They will beat everyone else. (Read Below). Office in New Avatar
Honestly, M$ is slow to adapt. I spoke to couple of guys and they told how the bureaucreacy supressed cool ideas and not to mention the fact they have a salesman heading the company not a experienced geek who holds a P.hd and contributed to the first lex @ AT&T.
July-2008 Microsoft Press Release
Baldy will feel sorry to announce that he couldn't see the web-based office in it's new avatar. Baldy will step down by the end of next quarter.
.....Recollects his nostalgic days, how unethically he killed cool tech companies....
Life goes on.......
You could always use Writely :)
Steve Jobs said flash-based players were CRAP right until he unveiled Apple's flash-iPod. So Sergey can keep on shouting: "we ain't doing it!" all the way to hell, but if someone can develop a Web-based solution for working with documents, that is Google. And I do believe that there must be better ways of creating stuff than with de MS Office paradigm.
So I say, not seeing is believing.
Disclosure: I'm stupid
What happened to "ZOMFG!!!1one!!!1 GOOGLE CONFIRMS IT!!!one!!1243". According to slashdot a few days ago, Google confirmed it, now they dont?! This is a classic example of the bias that allows such lies to florish. The fanboyism here at /. is unfathimable. They basically flat-out lied because they thought Google would come out with a web office suite. Just because you WANT something to happen so badly doesn't mean you should proclaim it as fact.
Bill Gates is a paranoid loser, that's why. He's got more than enough money. He's got more than enough power. But he still let's other people's excellence bother him. Ha ha ha, he'll never be happy and that is what a loser is.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They're saying that the "office suite" in its current incarnation is not something they want to do. As Brin said, "I don't really think that the thing is to take a previous generation of technology and port them directly." Because of all the media speculation, I think they will start making plans (that they don't have yet) for an office suite that (regular, not Slashdot) people are not used to. (Because, as peterprior mentioned above, there is Writely.)
I expect a CmdrTaco "No OpenDocument support. Less space than an Emacs window. Lame" post soon.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
When did Google announce anything before they had a beta you could play with?
So, until Google & Sun work out what they want to do, and Google has played with it, there won't be an announcement... Announcing vaporware as the next savior of the universe is an MS kind of thing to do.
I have faith in the team of Sun and Google to work out how to make the most of 'being against MS' and then execute the plan...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It an old style of writing headlines, No Office Suite is a quote from Google.
Headlines like "Robber was a madman, allegation" seem to be quite common on older papers, now adays the head line would read, 'Pedophile thief rapes old lady' or something just as made up.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
want sun products like StarOffice to make some money and partnering with an ailing giant is not really a way to *STAY* wonderkid's. No Backrubbing here. Or... Maybe they want to play sneaky and sneak out the Office on the Web. Or.. The three (Goog, Sun and MS) want to merge together.
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
So let me give them fodder!
Distributing OpenOffice wouldn't be useful. What would be useful, imho:
Now, the trick is to tie them all together such that I don't need to ever exit google.com. For instance, I might want to include a picture from the internet into my presentation. I should be able to, for instance, click on something like "insert photo from internet" and be able to use google images to find the right picture. I should never have to save things to and from my computer (though it would be nice to have that ability if necessary!). I think between Yahoo's new mail interface that demonstrates drag-and-drop, and the impressive Google mapping features, there is a demonstrated availability of the necessary technology to implement at least a basic office suite.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
We yearned, yet the Fates took a pass.
No Office, sweet Google? Alas...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
If Google is going to take on MS, it will be with something much smarter and more subtle than a direct head-on frontal assault. So no matter how cool we think that would be, expect something else. Google has been pretty good at "thinking different" so far, and I don't expect that to change.
Think Deeply.
I'm pretty sure most companies have gotten over the urge to put everything on the web, but for reporters, a web app has to deal with certain limitations:
1. The network.
2. Flaky web standards.
3. Living along side other plugins and browser extensions. (That means Other People's Threads in your process space.)
4. No standard API for printing, the raison d'etre for an office suite.
5. Browsers, by design, have virtually no integration with the rest of the OS.
I would just like to congratulate Slashdot. You've successfully managed to turn no story at all, into two seperate stories...
Since I started here, slashdot started accepting ads, there have been DDoS attacks, numerous other outages, break-ins, an increasing number of trolls, crapflooders, page-widening spam, M2, and the whole moderation system has repeatedly fallen flat on it's face... But it was all worth it to see a story posted about Google every single day, even when there's isn't any actual story.
*sniff* I promised myself I wouldn't cry... *sniff*
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Sure, that is a disappointing announcement. I was really looking forward to seeing what Google could do with an online Office app. However, they *ARE* up to something. They're having that secret "invite-only" press conference on, I think, October 26th. Perhaps that's to announce Google's "Calendar app" though. Not sure. I'm waiting excitedly. I'm a big fan of Google (though Google Reader has yet to grow on me at all).
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Whether Google plans to plunge into the web-based office suite or not, we don't know, but others have started to create web-based applications like Writely (word processing), Num Sum (spreadsheet), and Writeboard, and most of them use AJAX technology. This site called "The Unofficial Web Applications List" lists dozens of them.
Sun and Fun
Preferatbly 'informative'. Anyone who's seen the article in question would realise he has a point! I'd mod the AC up, but I'm afraid any moderation would be seen as incorrect and I wanted to point this out.
The picture is of Battelle sticking up his middle finger at the camera.
We Build Beautiful Websites
You would be right, except for the fact that people are already doing it.
If you don't believe it can be done, check out the actual applications. What many people don't seem to realize when they scoff at the idea of an AJAX based office quite is that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Konqueror, all have "design mode" APIs that allow a user and JavaScript to manipulate the web page directly. Combine that with some excellent import/export filters for HTMl to popular office formats, and you have a decent office suite framework already at your grasp.
If you really don't think it can be done, look at those sample apps, and consider that they are done with basically no budget. Now throw the mihgt of Google, it's money, and it's developers at the problem. It is not beyond feasability that they could construct such a suite in a matter of months, especially when you consider that 80% of the functions in MS Office are only used by 20% of the people
Also consider how well this would integrate with their existing core competancies (indexing and searching). You could store all your documents online ina shareable Google store, and they woudl already all be indexed and searchable. You could use your Google addrfesss book to select other people who would be allwed to access and search the documents. And of course you would use Google Talk to collaberate on them.
This has to be taken with a grain (or few grains) of salt. Remember, this is the head of the same company that was once laughing at Web Portals and said they would stay focused on search. So, Yes Office Suite Google! It's just a matter of time and surprise.
Simpy
Fancy up there html email composer to do:
1) Notes
2) Basic Documents
3) To Do Lists
4) Calendar Entries
Create a light csv viewer, manipulator
Create a DB client
Have a way to organize any sort of document.
Tab the interface with Google groups, Google Personal Search, Google Calendar, and Googles personal web page / blogger
#@$%%@#, a lot of people wouldn't need much else.
Google already is experimenting with an e-mail service with mailboxes of over 2 GB. I bet they are working hard on offering an omnipresent networkdrive, accessible via the Interweg, of course, in which people can store all the documents they need to get their jobs done. If they combine this with their Google toolbar they have one hell of a product to offer.
-- Cheers!
Mark my words, in five years form now everyone is complaining that Google is an evil company that misuses its monopoly position, and they should be wiped from the face of the earth.
-- Cheers!
Yahoo! has a notepad service and I use it ALL the time. I used to email myself things frequently just to keep track of them, now I just create folders and notes in yahoo's notepad. I highly recommend it.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I guess Google is starting to be more like MS around here. Instead of saying "the giant search engine", it's now "the giant ad broker".
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Most recently I've been using Gmail for all of my text editing. With its machine independence, autosaving, and the best spell checker on earth, why would I bother with a thick client?
I think this is the way to go. I agree with Sergey, Google is in a position to shatter our perceptions of how office work has to be done. We don't need Word and Outlook and Excel. We can do everything with thin clients, XML, and huge back-end databases.
That article doesn't make anysense, it's a bunch of quotes taken out of context. "However Brin left the door open a little. Documents would be easier to work with in the future, he promised, but he didn't think a fat client was the way to go." Doesn't tell us anything. What documents is talking about?
This big "announcement" is not. There is nothing on the sun site or even the press conference that really spells out what's going on. It was an opportunity for McNealy to get some good press next to google. In the press video, they had these stupid posters up listing each of the CEO's achievements over the last few years. Who cares? Especially when it comes to McNealy.
Pretty lame if you ask me.
I just downloaded and installed Google Earth. It's wicked cool.
http://earth.google.com/
You can zoom in and see the Sydney Opera House clearly in the Sydney Harbor then zoom out and zoom back on say the Eiffel tower in Paris.
What's interesting if you go to maps.google.com and look at and zoom in on say the White House and the Capitol Bldg. The roof of the White House is blanked out. And if you look at the Capitol Bldg. It's pixellated. I thought for grins to see how Google Earth does it. I zoomed in on both and saw the roofs of both buildings very clearly. Google Earth is an application you have to install on your desktop and you allow it to send 'anonymous' statistics to improve the program.
Aight here's the deal, last week my issue was with google being the next MS-Killer ... so this post is essentially right along those lines.
GOOGLE IS A COMPANY THAT DOES INTERNET APPLICATIONS MAINLY SEARCHING.
They're biggest competition is Yahoo, not microsoft. Let's see ... what company started off mainly as a search engine, then became a portal, started offering services that other sites did (Like driving directions, email, instant messaging, newsgroups, etc)? It wasn't microsoft, it was Yahoo.
People you've absolutely killing me here. First off people are google fan boys for no real apparent reason, like apple, they are a company whos main concern is to make money and as much of it as possible.
Hence, they are no different from any other for-profit company out there. End of story, google is no less "the man" than microsoft is. They are a company traded on the stock market, they are in the business not to change the world, but to ... let's here it ... MAKE MONEY.
Anyways, I hope that they keep the airconditioning on in your ivory tower...
I'm just happy that I can turn off the google story topic when I don't want to see what ELSE is happening in the world. So I'm not really going to blame slashdot here... I think the only one to blame for all my hostility is me, for actually cruising the google stories during the weekends.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
When it's already done ?
thin clients are fucking homo
you people are a pack of morons
mod parent up, +5 arcane vernacular, default meter with epic diction ironically employed in the orthodox register for funny mod
George Bush doesn't care about office software.
Unfortunately, you are thinking like a coder and not a businessman.
If efficiency was the gold standard by which an application was judged, then we'd all be writing assembler all the time. If code readability was the gold standard, then we would all be writing every application in CobolBasic.
All that matters, in reality, is a) Does this application look good, b) Does it do it's job well, and most importantly, c) Will people use it?
The consumer does not give a flying f*** if the codebase of an application is reuseable, or if it is cobbeled together with toothpicks and jello, as long as it works and makes their life easier. A web-based office suite would fit that role nicely. It would *just work*, it would do the job it was designed to do. It may not have every bell and whistle, but guess what? The vast majority of people don't care about that.
Not everyoule would use such an application, but Google would not need everyone to use it to be profitable. Hell, it would be so cheap to create and maintain, they could likely be profitable with a very small number of users in proportion to the number it takes Microsoft to turn a profit on MS Office.
he he he.. (Jon Stewart's Bush style)
Okay, Google says they won't bother directly porting an Office suite. What they are announcing is that they will put forth a way better product than Office. So, no they won't do an office suite. Yes, they will do something BETTER. *duh*
I use at least five computers on three different networks. Using Google for light text editing is relatively hassle free and featureful. But the key here is availability. As long as I am connected, my text is there. I also agree with your coments on the spell checker. I write in english and spanish and the spell cheker recognizes each language automatically. I don't think it has been lost on Google that many are doing what I'm doing.
But still, I think Mr. Brin is telling it straight. There's too much effort to be done in order to provide a network (or AJAX) equivalent to an office suite. Plus I don't think Google is too keen on reinventing that particular wheel. And it wouldn't (now, at least) fit along with Google's revenue making AdSense.
I think what Google will provide is key services that are available in most office suites today (and some that aren't, of course). Something like an Intelligent Formatter; where you just "send" the text you created via GMail to a service. Of course while you wait for the intelligent formatter Google serves you relevant ads on based on the words in the document you made. Or perhaps there will be a service where your text is converted into other formats like OpenDocument or PDF and even DOC...
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Web does not only mean storage on web. It MIGHT also mean using a web app to create it. Get the difference, you moron.
But its difficult to figure out who is more stupid, the moron who posted this or the moderators giving it +5 interesting!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Honestly, I'm pretty easy to amuse but the hacks at the Reg have consistently failed to display anything approaching genuine wit.
Perhaps /. should add some sort of warning to all Register-bound outward links.
Please read the damn articles before debating them for hours --- morons.
And when are they going to add support for automatically pluging into all of the software that is written to integrate with MS Office? Businesses dont just buy MS Office and start typing documents... Their programmers write applications that integrate their shipping software with MS Word for mail merge label printing and MS Excel for stats of all the packages going out. What about all the workflow systems integrated with insurance company document management and portal systems that are then integrated with MS Words change management / collaboration features? Programmers also integrate MS Access into all the other parts of MS Office. Is Google going to build an online replacement for MS Access? Will it have VBA so the code can just be exported to Google Access? The only customers they are going to get are the ones that already dont use MS Office.
As an example, my employer recently changed its name (again). It's really simple to write a little shell script to unzip filea, s/oldname/newname/g, and zip back up, without ever needing an 'office application' at all.
Google might want to use its server farm to gather information requested, and construct an *.od* on the fly to download to the user. After all, they already do it with HTML. It can't be all that difficult to do XML instead, and send the output to a compression program.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
News for Google fanboys. Stuff that doesn't matter.
I mean seriously, Slashdot posts a story every time someone at Google sneezes. I'm a little sick of it. Trouble is, most of the stories don't go under the Google category, so it's impossible to filter them out.
Really, who gives a fuck?
Anyone heard of Think Free Office?
It's not totally free in the way the gOffice dreamers would like it to be, but I must say I was pretty impressed with the interface (basically an Office 2000 clone but in your browser).
BTW, it's 100% Java so it works in Linux, Mac or whatever.
Link here: http://www.thinkfree.com/
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=slashdot&s a=N&tab=wi
Google Images is DOWN!!!
You end up getting a 404 error.
A friend in need..is a bloody nuisance.
No. I don't agree. Look deeper. Eric is a matured man. He is not making the mistakes which M$ did. Bill / Stever never cared to lobby at WA until the anti-trust case. Eric is smart enough to open an office in DC to lobby.
People are already hating GOOG. I don't care as long as I see innovation and technocrats being respected not asshole salesmen.
Slashdot is run by a pack of breast-fed homos
I find it a little strange that everyone goes so ga-ga over the idea of having every aspect of their electronic lives revolve around one company. Yay, we've shed our dependence on M$, let's lean on Google for everything now! Personally, now that I have my google personal homepage linking to gmail & so forth, I'm starting to find their ubiquity a little insidious. I really don't think I'd want *any* company to have that, plus all of my documents on their disk.
I thought the fact that the "Google Declares War on Microsoft" specifically mentioned Sun's OpenOffice was a dead give-away. As one poster commented, OpenOffice.org is OSS software, Sun owns Star Office.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
However distributed thin web applications allowed you to do "new and better things than the Office package and more.""
Thats crazy, if there was something to add to an office package how come no company or person has come up with it in the last 10 years. There is only so much you can do with a word processor and spread sheet.
Well? It is.
What's wrong with OpenOffice? It's great, does everything you need, works on multiple platforms, and *already exists*. Both 1.1.5 and 2.0RC 1 have good enough MS compatibility.
My only qualm regarding OpenOffice is that the newest (2.0 RC 1) version doesn't have a nice binary install like the 1.x.x series. It appears only RPMs are available. I don't have an RPM-based system, so I'm out of luck. And to answer the question I already know I will hear (I've been on Slashdot too long to not know this), have YOU ever built OpenOffice from the source?
My only problem with Google is how will people find that very creative, yet extremely retarded way of putting the $ in M$ into Google? After all, god forbid, a company out to make a profit. Google is trying the EXACT same things as MS. Buying out companies for their products/ideas? Ya. Stealing away employees the same way people bitched about MS for doing? Ya.
Google lucked out and got a ton of people hooked early, and what now (just like MS)? They aren't light years ahead of anyone (just like MS, with the exception of Office, coincidentally). Yahoo has just as many good results as I find using Google (even though I use Google out of habit), and even MSN Search has just as many good results. In fact, I haven't seen any "MSN bombing" or "Yahoo bombing." Google has been a miserable failure in fixing this though.
Note the "ad" on the right of those search results: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombi ng-failure.html .
I really do not understand how they feel it does not affect the overall quality of their search service? A group of smart users can knowingly change the meaning of ANY search result they see fit and Google is willing to knowingly ignore this? That seems like quite a weakness in their algorithm to me. Admittedly, I do not know how they might go about fixing that issue, but at the same time I am not being paid too, nor am I interested in being paid to do it.I use GMail, but only because I needed an email account with an email username that I wanted (unlike PICKY432412312321 that you see on older services), outside of my personal email account (business, and personal). As an early adopter, I got the perk of getting the one I wanted, and convienently a huge mailbox (~2.7 GB now). I don't even use 2 MBs of it though and I regularly "delete" messages from the service, and I am fearful about the rumours that nothing is actually deleted, so I only use it as an account I accept can be spammed (use the account on questionable websites as my contact address, expecting them to spam it). It's also annoying that I cannot send files over 10 MB to my GMail account, which is one of the other reasons I originally signed up for it (beats using MY FTP space!).
As I recall, WordPerfect had developed a relatively robust web-based wordprocessor in 1997. It ran in a basic Java environment and downloaded pretty quick. They had the prototype up for awhile but never had the revenue model worked out? (This has probably changed)
Maybe they will try again?
"However distributed thin web applications allowed you to do 'new and better things than the Office package and more.'"
If most of your customers are still dealing in Microsoft Office documents, and they won't switch to OpenOffice because of "compatibility" concerns, how are they going to switch to Net-based documents? There would have to be a really "killer app" to make them do that, right?
What would be an example of a Net-based "killer app" that would cause someone to stop using Microsoft Word, for example? Anybody got any ideas?
I mean, this whole business of Microsoft compatibility is either a red herring or a real issue for any given company. If the latter, there has to be a technical solution to it. So what is it (other than AI which we don't have any idea how to create at the moment)?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Google has been a miserable failure in fixing this though.
That first search result is a prime example of miserable failure; I don't see what needs fixing here.
...um...creating another something like Microsoft. Knocking Microsoft down a few pegs just means somebody else gets bigger and protective about its market turf, and they start acting like MS, which is just acting like any other big,rich, successful company protecting it market turf so that it can continue to be big, rich, and successful. So Google becomes Fuggle and everybody stops flipping off MS and flips the fuggie sign at them, getting stuck for sticking it to MS.
"web-based Office suite" - sounds like "web based craaaap" - I think Mr. 1/2 Google himself is saying, "We are going to create something that is free (other than a little advertising) and way way better than msoffice for your document management editing and management needs. And you can access it from any web browser in the world, any computer platform. Screw you, Microsoft." Thats what I heard...
Horns are really just a broken halo.
It's not google, but the G can help google buy it. check http://www.goffice.com/