Slashdot Mirror
Google Enters Web-Office Market
jaiva writes "Google's official blog tells us that Google has acquired Writely, a collaborative word processor." From the article: "To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it's far from perfect. Upholding our great user experience means everything to us, so we're not accepting new registrations until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture. If you're interested in giving us a try, we hope you'll get on the waitlist so we can let you know when you'll be able to try out Writely."
In other news, Google releases a new slogan:
"What starts in beta, stays in beta"
Typical slashdoter... not checking www.bugmenot.com .... Try this
Login: boston@dodgeit.com
Password: Boston
Enjoy! (Yes I tested it unless some troll changed the password. )
To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it's far from perfect.
A perfect into the Google product line.
I'd really be interested in something along these lines... but with wiki integration! How cool would that be? WYSIWIG wiki, end user focused, and with security features.... so that even dumb people could use it... err.. I think thats what this is huh?
--Matt Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com
till i can upload my company files to an American advertising based company so they can rifle through our documents looking for whatever them or their goverment takes their fancy
yeah i can predict this will be a great success
Love, Gogle Developmint Teem
While there is great debate about googles master plan or if it has one. The whole concept that they make things and then try to make them profitable. The more i see their actions the more a threat to almost every element of the PC industry they present.
1-Online Storage
2-Office Suite Program
3-Data Search
4-E-Mail, Chat
5-Entertainment (Video, Photos)
6-Online Sales ?7?-Games?? (is this a possibility down the line) A large sector with big potential
I'll be honest I am one who thinks that eventually we are going to be returning to dummy terminals, a lot of these items would support that. I think they have a bigger plan, and I think we are beginning to see pieces that fit together. But also they have one or two more cards they havent played yet.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Slashpoo^H^H^Hdot:
A collaborati^H^H^Hative environment is the^H^H^H only good if you hate^H^H^H^H trust the people you are working with.
---
I have used my share of realtime collaborative environments. For some reason, someone is always immature enough to start drawing rude pictures or writing pointless statements.
While I realize it isn't always the case, I find that half of the people I collaborate with online are in the same building. Come visit, lets go for a coffee and work on the same document there.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
This is certainly a step in the right direction. I'm interested in automatic document generation, and it's a coincidence that Peter Norvig gave a talk at a colloquium here at BYU this morning. I asked him if he thought Google would ever get into the business of automatically generating documents using their 500 TB of data as a source (i.e. automatically created Wikipedia articles on any subject). He said no, because of copyright issues and the like, but it'll be interesting to see how "Writely" turns out. It seems like it's a stepping stone to completely automated document generation, and might yield some good ideas.
You were expecting a "web-office" to work without javascript?
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
On one hand, this may be an intro into a market in which Google will begin to destroy Microsoft's market share. On the other hand, this could be just the opportunity Microsoft needs to bring Google down. Google and Microsoft will now have products in the same category: Word Processors.
Not only "land of the free" but "land of the lawyers" who love a good old 1st amendment smackdown. Shihar 153932
Writely is based upon ASP.NET.
Will this save them appreciable time? They will have to do a rewrite or be based on Microsoft technology (yeah, right).
One of the most impressive features of Writely is that it integrates perfectlly with Word and OpenOffice.
From their FAQ:
* Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text (or create documents from scratch).
* Use our simple WYSIWYG editor to format your documents, spell-check them, etc.
* Invite others to share your documents (by e-mail address).
* Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
* View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version.
* Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.
* Download documents to your desktop as Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF*, HTML or zip.
* Post your documents to your blog.
it requires junk like cookies and javascript
If you care so much as to turn cookies and javascript off (like myself) then you probably would not use an online office suite anyway.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
"a collaborative word processor that runs in a web browser"
This sort of app is awfully reminiscent of The World Wide Web, written by Tim Berners-Lee at Cern a while back. Anything ever come of that...?
She sounds like Napoleon after starting the war against russia, or maybe Einstein telling someone time is relative and space is bent.
Oh my GOD, sharing DOCUMENTS??? REVOLUTION! Someone call Nobel. He has TO GIVE HER A PRICE.
Fleur de Sel
I've used Writely for about 5 months now. Obviously I like it, but what I see as the pros + cons are:
;) If you're not doing those, then it just becomes a trade-off between privacy and convenience.
;)
Pros
* Good, clean user interface
* Access documents from anywhere (main reason I use it)
* Don't lose your documents if your PC dies
* Sharing documents is good when planning things in groups
Cons
* Privacy issues
* Not as feature rich as Word
Privacy wasn't really a concern of mine, mainly because the documents I work on aren't highly confidential -- I'm not writing down my PIN numbers and not plotting evil plans.
Features I'd like them to add include: user-defined styles, ability to copy/paste graphics, and improved table layouts. So far though, it's pretty good.
In other words, check it out once it's open again.
MyLinkVault - online bookmarks with a fast drag-and-dr
Is this an attempt for Google to compete with Microsoft in word processing? Because as cool as this may be, it's going to be mighty difficult to topple Microsoft in that department. The Office Suite is so embedded in the corporate world and homes that garnering support for this product will be difficult at best. People know how to use Word. The majority won't want to go to something else that is new and shiny. CIO's won't take the risk of switching over to a new system when they already have a tried and tested system in place.
Microsoft already whipped most opposition to it. Also, after development is this going to be free or is the consumer going to end up paying for the privelege?
It appears more and more apparent that Google is basing their business model on Microsoft (acquire and re-badge).
I'd love to see Google actually take the fight to Microsoft on something that Microsoft has not traditionally been strong at and show them how it should be done. Show them that they are innovaters and not just tagging along on already established software. Trying and compete with them on this front is almost a lost cause.
* Home page says "Store your documents securely online."
* Sign-in page says "Simple & secure document collaboration and publishing"
So if it's so secure, why isn't SSL used *anywhere* on the site? The even more strange thing is that there is a secure cert on the site at https://www.writely.com/ but nothing actually links to it...ho hum. Yes, you can indeed login via SSL if you want - apparently they're worried about server load if they made SSL the default... Maybe with the Google infrastructure behind them, they can turn on SSL by default?
This is technical nonsense. Just because you have been told that these are your only options does not mean it is true.
So answer the question people are putting in front of you. How do you plan to offer a rich text editor on the order of Microsoft Word without using JavaScript to manipulate the DOM? Keep in mind that the browser Rich Text Editing control is dependent on JavaScript for operation.
Go ahead, tell us. We're listening very closely at the moment. Your answer will mark you as either as an amazing genius or technologically ignorant. If you attempt to evade the issue (like you've been doing), the mods will simply assume you're troll. (As will everyone else.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Google:
We know what you have. (You've indexed your hard drives.)
We know where you [and family] live. (All mark their homes on Google Maps.)
We know who you like; we know who you hate. (Chat & e-mail.)
We know what you buy. (Let's be frugal.)
We know where you go. (What's happening G-locally?)
We know when you sleep; when you awaken. (Usage analysis.)
And now, we know virtually all your thoughts & plans. (Using Writely?)
Motto: At Google, your world is our world.
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
Google is much beta now. Very happy.
From Mark Aliers team. Gives you a wiki with access control, wysiwyg, and all that cool wiki stuff.
Actually there is a wysiwyg wiki in Moodle now, but the new one is better:-).
Get the beta here, (get 1.6 for the wiki) :
And tell Google to hire us all, I mean shouldn't google have an LMS too?