Google Office To Get an API

Orange Crush writes, "Google's new office applications, Docs & Spreadsheets, will provide APIs for custom apps. Johnathan Rochelle, project manager: 'We definitely want to build out APIs, especially for the spreadsheets side, as spreadsheets are more data-oriented, but maybe also for the word processor. People will be able to do mashups with our tools for other things, and not be stuck behind our dev cycle for everything they want. If I've already got data somewhere you can't really rely on manual cut-and-paste to make it collaborative. Imagine pulling data from any application you've already got in use... you get that data over to the hosted app, make it collaborative, then bring it back... that's what we'd like to enable at some point.'" Eating their own dogfood: Rochelle said that "Everybody in [Google] is using the tool" already.

Offline Office at last

[solafide]

I was reading a article on zdnet a couple days ago about how the problem of Web2.0 and Web2.0 storing its data online was that you couldn't use this data when you weren't connected to the internet. Here's the answer: a small app that reads and writes using this API, but can store to your computer for later online storage when reconnected to the internet. I can't wait till it comes to Linux.

The API is Google's Intel inside

[budGibson]

If storage is becoming more net-centric [wsjonline.com], what really matters is having the most ways possible to access your data. People don't really need the desktop software features. I'd gladly give away 90% of them if it was just easier to collaborate and be able to find our stuff when we need it.

To hell with expensive collaboration tools that require my own server. First there was eroom [emc.com], then the much cheaper 37 signals [37signals.com], and now the free google [google.com]. Long live google.

If they really want this to take off...

[Gunfighter]

... they should expand on the Google Apps for Your Domain idea and start offering all of this stuff in a nice, big bundle along with a registrar offering. Imagine if, for the low, low price of a domain registration, you were able to get the following in one, nice, dashboard-style interface:

• Domain registration (don't think they offer this one yet)
• Website hosting (Google Pages) (Note: Need to expand on this one and offer some programmability via PHP or Python or something)
• Database (Google Base)
• Message boards (Google Groups)
• Image hosting (Picasa Web)
• Office apps (Docs & Spreadsheets)
• Email (Gmail)
• Instant Messaging (Google Talk)
• Calendaring (Google Calendar)
• File storage (GDrive)
• Video (Google Video/YouTube)
• News aggregation (Google Reader)
• Revision/code revision management (Google Code)
• etc. etc. etc.

The key is to bundle them all together in an easy to use interface. Perhaps even a desktop client. Heck, with their resources, they could probably wrap it all up into that Google Operating System everyone was all giddy about a while back. Right now, everything (with the exception of the existing Google Apps for Your Domain suite) is pretty spread out as separate products. If they could tie all of these together and make collaboration and integration a little better, it would be the ultimate groupware suite. Just throw in an accounting program (Google Financials?) and you're all set. Charge monthly/yearly fees for companies/domains that go over the maximum storage (perhaps offer a combined storage limit for all of the products put together?) or need more users/groups.