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Writely.com Beta - Google's Answer to Word
bahree writes "Google has launched their beta version of Writely.com. Writely is their word processor and answer to Microsoft Word. In addition to the usual editing features it includes many collaboration features, as well as the ability to save documents as PDFs and RSS feeds."
What's with the lack of a direct link? Oh right, blogvertising. Forgot.
(check the blog's title for a laugh from the author's mental age by the way)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Seriously, since I heard about Google's infinite retention policy, I'm even afraid of using google search anymore. For the simpler stuff I use other search engines. Half the pages I go to have Google ads and by using gmail and google groups, they've got a lot of information on me.
The last last thing I want to do is use Google to edit my documents.
It hasn't happened as much yet but soon I expect to go somewhere and see Google ads with very interesting (to me) titles. Then, I'll click and spend time on it and make me feel like I need to buy this or that.
Seriously, someone has to start an open-source project to write a super-duper search engine code so that websites can use it to search themselves. It's easier to use google to search through slashdot that to use the slashdot search feature (which sucks really bad by the way).
We have open source firefox and thunderbirld, we need open source code for searching.
I'm staying away from Google calendars and google what nots from now on due to privacy concerns.
Remember, anything on someone else's server is destined to become public knowledge. It may be inadvertent, it may be because of a court order, a government investigation, a rogue employee, or because someone hacks the server. In the future world of software as a service, where your personal data is stored on someone else's computer, the privacy of that data is only as good as the technical, legal, and political environment makes it. For the US, as recent months have proven, that means there is no privacy you can count on. So be sure you never write about your questionable deductions on your income tax, or your recent affair in the Bahamas, or how you managed to carry banned items on your last airplane trip, or anything else you wouldn't want public, when using this service.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
As a business, why would I use an office suite that requires me to (in effect) give a copy of all of my documents to another corporation, when I have a perfectly good alternative that only costs a few hundred bucks per seat? The privacy concerns for this thing are far too great to overcome the cost advantage for a business that cares about keepings its corporate secrets secret.
Anything you type down should be things that you don't mind any others seeing. This is something you might think only needs to kept in mind with gmail, but it is a good overall rule, as even regular email itself can be stored by the recipient indefinitely and be used at a later date.
As Cardinal Richelieu said:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
...or hassles later?
The reviewer says Writely might be useful because downloading and installing OOo is too much of a hassle. Hmm...what about the hassle of managing two sets of files: one on your computer's hard disk and one on the google grid? The confusion when you end up with two versions of the same file, one on your computer and one on google's grid? What about the hassle that comes when you want to edit your document, but you don't have internet access at the moment? What about the hassle when you find out it doesn't work in the browser you have installed on the machine you're using at the moment? What about the hassle when your document gets too big, and Writely's performance starts to be unacceptable?
AJAX is fundamentally a bad idea. It's an attempt to use a web browser and http for something they were never designed to do, and they can't do without browser-specific hacks on the developer's side, and breaking lots of familiar conventions on the user's side. It's also a retreat into proprietary software, at a moment when a full-featured stack of open-source apps is pretty much ready for prime time.
Find free books.
One advantage I can see is that your documents will be available anywhere you can get access to the web, which can be a pretty compelling argument. I also suspect that Google will try to sell a complete Office server to corporates, which will let them keep their data secure on their private servers while still letting their employees access these documents from the web. In fact, I'd bet that's why MS is so scared of Google.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
"...why would I use an office suite that requires me to (in effect) give a copy of all of my documents to another corporation, when I have a perfectly good alternative that only costs a few hundred bucks per seat?"
:)
Any business with a competent IT staff is already putting all its documents in the hands of another corporation on a regular basis in the form of off-site backups. This just automates the process
Anyone want to start a pool on what CSS/javascript features get broken or removed in future releases of IE7 as Microsoft tries to kill Writely and Google Spreadsheets?
The reason you'd use Google everything as a small business, isn't because you'd save $<small> on MS Office. It's because you'd save $<large> on servers & an IT Department.
Would you rather set up exchange, some open source calendaring app, or goocal?
Me too.
So you're right, it's cost vs secrecy, but the cost savings is gigantic.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
...or does anyone else also hate the idea of having private documents stored on a server rather than (only) on your own PC?
I think you've fallen into the trap of anthromorphosizing Google.
Google isn't a guy who lives down the street and has a specific character and you can depend on him to hold on to your secrets.
The leaders of the google has a policy and all but in reality it has stockholders and is traded on the stock market. People can retire, be fired or replaced but Google is still there.
Saying something like I trust Google doesn't make sense. If there is an oppertunity to sucessfully exploit for money then you can safely bet Google will do it eventually.
I remember Microsoft in the early days. Everyone considered Bill Gates a genuis. A reporter even asked him if he thought he should have gone to Physics instead of starting Microsoft? People thought he was so brilliant and genuis. It didn't take long for Microsoft to exploit their powers and become evil since no-one could do anything about it.
The way that most (home users especially) buy computers, they already come with a word processor of some sort bundled with all the other crap the OEM (HP, Dell, etc) sticks on the system. It's nearly impossible to buy a major manufacturer's system without all the preloaded junk, and often times you spend the same or more on the stripped down version. (Yes, you can 'roll your own' system, but *MOST* people don't do that, nor do they know how.) So, most home users have either Works or Word Perfect (Mac's have their own), which is more than adequate for virtually all their text document writing needs. Those that don't have something preloaded can install OpenOffice.org or even Abiword for a free word processor.
Big business, with the typical big-business IT strategy has already chosen (most likely) Microsoft Office to standardize on. The few forward-thinking organizations are already using something like OpenOffice.org.
Many business users of Microsoft Office have 'install at home' rights to their business' license of Office, so those folks can use Office at home as well as at work.
With a 500k maximum document size, limited feature set, and all the privacy concerns that go along with using a Google-owned web application -- the only people that can really get some use out of Writely is people with blogs who can post directly one of the six compatible blogging sites (since blogs are typically published to the public, less privacy issues). And still, you're giving Google your login information for the blog (another privacy concern), so I'd think it's only a viable tool for Google's own Blogger.com users (since Google's already got your login information there).
And, not to forget, a web-based app requires web access of a sufficient speed to use -- and not everybody is hooked up to a full-time high speed internet connection. "Little Tommy couldn't hand in his homework because the internet was down" could become the new "My dog ate my homework", and with reliability problems some broadband providers have, there might actually be some truth to the excuse.
The speculation of a Google-box appliance that big business can install on their own LAN, without the privacy concerns of using a Google web-based application sounds like it *could* be a serious contender against Microsoft Office, but it needs to be a complete and integrated solution suite, and even then it will likely be a tough sell. Google's got a lot of work to do before they're ready for that.
I think it's primarily a traffic generating gimmick for Google (until the above business server materializes). People will use it, but not necessarily need the few unique features it has, simply because "it's there" and they've already been hooked into some other Google gimmick or gadget (mail, calendar, talk, etc).
I wish Google would code to the standard rather then standard to the browser :( They're strong enough that they could force all browsers (except possibly IE) to actually be standard compliant.
but pointing out a flaw in one of their products is not trolling
I don't think telling you that my product supports this and this and that, and telling you that it doesn't yet support these and those yet, is a flaw in my product. It might be lack of features on my part, it might be lack of features in your browsers you would like to use with my product, still, when I tell you in advance what it does and what it doesn't, then I really think you shouldn't label it as being flawed.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.