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."

wiki killer?

[keilinw]

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 [themindofmatthew.com]

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.

Right Direction

[whois_drek]

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.

Re:Best features

[coastin]

Yes, they are also very responsive to their users. I began using Writely when they first rolled out could I could collaborate with my project leader on a technical paper we were writing for publication in a scientific journal. At the time they did not support OpenOffice, but they responded to an e-mail I sent that it was in the works. A few days later it was added to the supported format list. You can also e-mail your text to create a document.

Mentions "secure" several times, but no SSL!

[rklrkl]

What I really don't like about Writely (apart from the fact that you really don't want to upload/type in anything confidential into it!) is that it makes a big deal about security:

* 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/ [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?

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:This is obvious...

[Oxen]

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

From the online tour, "Let me tell you, Writley is AMAZING. It's easy to use, efficient (it auto-saves once in awhile, but you can't tell it's so smooth), and perfect.

Re:I can't wait

[cmacb]

"What kind of moron would use this service on company files, or on documents with information you need kept secure? "

Believe me, the typical user of Microsoft Office is even DUMBER! They carry around important documents on floppy disks and laptops, frequently misplacing both and sometime losing them. They e-mail their freaking Word and Excel files to each other anyway, up to the point where the files are so big they bounce. Finally they are often at the mercy of network administrators who don't give a rat's ass about their company secrets.

Much better in fact to do business with an online company that promises to keep your documents safe and secure. If Google, or anyone else provides such a service, and takes it beyond a beta for personal use I'm quite sure there will be grounds to sue said company if their products fail.

Last time I checked nobody had successfully sued Microsoft for putting out crap. But while they say "no one ever gets fired for using Microsoft" such people DO get fired, they just put other reasons on the form.