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."

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:Compatibility

[NamShubCMX]

You were expecting a "web-office" to work without javascript?

Google's suite...

[sdirrim]

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.

Writely Technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

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.

Re:pieces of a puzzle...

[Anonymous Coward]

To me it's fairly straightfoward. They are prototyping all of these web-office apps over the internet, to get all scaleability and usability issues worked out.

Then, they'll start selling servers running the whole productivity suite to replace Microsoft exchange/office to businesses.

What IT department wouldn't seriously consider moving to a system where desktop application upgrades happen once at the server and the only thing needed to support it on the workforce's machines is a web browser? Every employees documents stored on the "G:" drive that is easily tracked and backed up, rather than having to worry about remote backups on each desktop?

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, do explain how exactly you'd implement anything like a word processor in a browser without cookies and javascript. Perhaps we should only us IE and Active X.

My guess is that you got "flamebait" because there wasn't an "ignorant" option.

Re:wiki killer?

[Mean Variance]

Or they'll just buy Jotspot.

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.

Writely Vs Word

[highwaytohell]

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.

Re:ActiveX instead?

[AKAImBatman]

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.)

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 [slashdot.org] and Opera [gigaom.com]. 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.

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.

"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.

Re:A collaborative reply.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I had man goo today for lunch."

Fixed it for you. Now THAT'S collaborating.

Re:I can't wait

[Haertchen]

Well, I rather think that if you want to keep something absolutely private, don't use the service.

As others have pointed out before, the same applies to email, or just about any other activity online. And I think that that was the real jist of the grandparent post. Only put things on that the whole world could read; there are plenty of those and the service is useful.

Re:I can't wait

[missing_boy]

You sound like my mom. She says that "Why should I be afraid of , as long as I'm not doing anything wrong...?" in reply to my concerns about our decaying civil liberties. You cannot accept the possibility of your private affairs being surveilled, read or gathered by anybody, unless you're perfectly happy with living in what can very easily turn into a dictatorial police state.