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."

Comments

It's in beta? Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Google releases a new slogan:

"What starts in beta, stays in beta"

This is obvious...

[__aaclcg7560]

To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it's far from perfect.

A perfect into the Google product line.

I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:I can't wait

[quanticle]

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I really wouldn't mind having something like this. As a college student, I often have multiple unsynchronized copies of term papers in different places. A service like Writely helps keep everything up-to-date, and in one place.

As for privacy, if you want to search through my History of Science term paper, be my guest.

Writely rites good!

[LiftOp]

Spelchecker needs werk.

Love, Gogle Developmint Teem

pieces of a puzzle...

[pvt_medic]

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.

Re:pieces of a puzzle...

[larry bagina]

remember when google burst on the scene? Yahoo! was formerly the king of search engines, but they got sidetracked with other things -- message boards, chat, email, auctions, stores, credit cards, hell they even had a magazine. Google showed up, doing searches and nothing but searches.

So now google has expanded into other territory. Half of their services are in perpetual beta. Thanks to keyword spamming and gaming the google, their search results are often useless. Click fraud is very real.

Google is a threat, but they're a threat to themselves.

Re:Compatibility

[tehshen]

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.

What's old is new...

[ferd_farkle]

"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...?

Writely pros + cons

[Damana Mathos]

I've used Writely for about 5 months now. Obviously I like it, but what I see as the pros + cons are:

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. ;) If you're not doing those, then it just becomes a trade-off between privacy and convenience.

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. ;)

Re:Writely Technology?

[pebs]

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).

I doubt they will do a rewrite. Probably get it running in Mono/Linux if anything. Orkut is written in ASP.Net, but I believe they run it in Mono/Linux.

Re:Writely Vs Word

[WhiteWolf666]

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.

How about:

Search (Google>MSN or Windows Live)
E-mail (Gmail>Hotmail)
Desktop Search (G. Desktop>Windows Indexing Service. We'll see about Vista)
Corporate Intranet Search (Google Enterprise>WDS Enterprise)
What about Google Scholar, or Google Answers?
What about Google Wifi?

Google's good at search. Really good. They've made a LOT of money with search, and "search" technologies are the kind of thing you can integrate into most any application, and cross-applications as well.

Thus, when Google wants to compete with Microsoft, why bother building a new solution, when they can purchase a company that builds a great solution, but is financially incapable of competing with Microsoft?

Buy Keyhole. Add Search.
Buy Hello+Picassa. Add Search.
Buy Blogger. Add Search.
Build on Jabber. Add Search.

See the trend?

Add a program to the Google palette, make it interoperate with the other Google apps, and move on.

Writely is a nice product. It produces Word and OpenOffice.org compatible output. It's a good enough wordprocessor for 99% of people. And as a web app, Google can integrate it into Gmail, Blogger, hell, Google Talk. Add in search. Add in online storage.

See the Google strategy?

Of course, you've got to be able to run your web apps on browsers, and if MS dominates the browser market, that could get risky. Then again, one might wonder why Google funds Mozilla and Opera. Note that there isn't ANYTHING fishy going on here; Firefox (and Opera) give Google search referrals, and Google pays them. It's entirely straightforward, non-binding, and easy to change by the user.

As soon as I get the opporunity, I'm switching my company to an online Office solution. Sure; you can use your own Office desktop if you like. But most people, who don't need the fancy Office (OpenOffice.org) features will be okay using Writely.

A clutch feature for me will be if writely has excellent ODTDOC conversion. Then I can switch our file format, too.

But I don't think its fair to critize Google for staying with its core abilities. Google is a search company (or started as one, anyways). Google's developers are brilliant, but there is no reason for Google to launch a completely new app if there are other talented developers out there doing the same thing. Either buy 'em out, or co-develop with them. You don't always have to be evil and use the embrace->extend model in order to win. I think Google is winning the battle v. Microsoft in an entirely "good" way.

"At Google, we know."

[zenwarrior]

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.