Google Soon To Step Into Online Word Processing

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Hi guys,

????[/tab]I came across this site called Writely - which offers you an online browser-based Word Processor, quite similar to what Microsoft is trying to offer in it's Windows Live. What suddenly caught my notice was this one single line right below their site logo that says -

The Web Word Processor

...that's now part of Google.

 

[tab]Digging further I came upon this article at Red Herring describing Google's buyout of this company and the subsequent assimilation of this into the Google system.. My guess is soon enough we'll find Google making a public announcement about stepping into this arena... When Microsoft is at it, Google can't be far behind.. can it ?

Google Buys Writely

 

The search company strikes at Microsoft by acquiring a web-based Word competitor.

March 9, 2006

 

In an overt challenge to Microsoft, search giant Google said Thursday it had acquired Writely, an online word processing tool, for an undisclosed amount.

 

Writely, a project of Upstartle, functions much like Microsoft Word but in a web browser. The online environment allows for collaboration between multiple authors and the benefit of someone else hosting your document.

 

The four employees of the Portola Valley, California-based company, which has not disclosed any outside funding, will move a couple exits south to Mountain View, California-based Google.

 

In a post on Googles blog, Writelys Jen Mazzon said many thousands of people had used Writely, which debuted in a beta version at the end of August 2005. She said the software would not be available to additional users until it had been moved onto Googles systems.

 

Upstartle CEO Sam Schillace said, Were absolutely thrilled, but declined further comment.

 

Read more at: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

Free signup at the Writely site has been temporarily shut down while their system is being migrated to Google.

 

Funny thing is I'd have NEVER come across this Writely site, unless it was for those little newsflashes in Google Desktop !! That's how I found Writely - thinking that - "Oh! Cool.. another online WP... let me check it out."

[serverph 0]

where have you been, micro!? this topic has been in Xisto forums since a month ago, at least. well, speculations here are more of an entire suite of G-Office kind of thing online applications, not just the word processor from writely.

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Eeeeeks.. hehe.. a little too late. Been travelling a lot recently.

[realthor 0]

Guess google tries too hard to be everything for everybody but my guess is that in this matter if the office suite will be free we'll have another gogle product winner...they're hard to get beaten...we'll see.

[arnz 0]

Dunno where you've been for the last few months, but it's been up for a while. It would be interesting had they released it to compete against Micro$oft though lo.

[antwill 0]

Wow its about time google does something like that, hopefully it will be free, well ofcourse it will be but will i still need to use Microsoft Office? As it takes up some space that i could use for games. This will be very interesting to see how it turns out and how popular it is though.

[Tyssen 0]

Why do you think MS still can't get IE7 to conform to the same level of W3C standards as every other browser? Because they're trying to hold back the development of the Internet to make it harder for companies like Google to steal their marketshare in desktop apps.

[realthor 0]

They're forced now to comply to some extent that anyway make the AJAX platform viable even on IE7 so i guess nothing is gonna stop Google from what they want to do, perhaps only the fact that not everybody has broadband internet access to get quick responses and real-time complicated editing (??). But i'll be glad to see what comes next

[trace-uk 0]

the only drawback of onine word processors is they are less stable by nature. take yahoo or hotmail's compose for email, sometimes you'll hit delete emaning to delete the word and the browser will go back a page :lol:Then you've lost all that text you've put in.

[rlineker 0]

will google also make a office based software like microsoft office 2003

[brainless 0]

I suppose it's nothing too new google's checking out there, it kind of reminds me of the FCKeditor (which probably does not look into the stuff you write)...trace-uk: This problem can be solved using a JavaScript as one of my freemail providers does - set a cookie with the text you've typed every once in a while; delete it on hitting the save-button; check for it when the editing page is loaded; if it exists, ask whether the previous text shall be restored...