Filed under: Office, Web services, Google
Google buys Writely, office domination inevitable?
Another piece of Google's fabled web-based office suite falls into place with the big G's acquisition of Writely, the web-based word processor
that we (and everyone else) have been keeping an eye on since
its beta launch last year. To refresh your memory, Writely is the flagship product of Upstartle and lets people
collaboratively write and edit documents in their web browser. Writely shares its category with heavy hitter 37signals'
Writeboard, Zoho Writer, and
many more that seem to be popping up weekly. As Om
Malik points out, Google has Gmail and its upcoming CL2
calendar app poised to replace Outlook and Google Base has the potential to replace the likes of Access, so all that's
missing for a complete 
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The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Roleo Hibachi said 11:02PM on 3-09-2006
and, lest we forget, Google Pages, the HTML editor. A sort of mini-FrontPage? And what of Publisher?
It will happen, all in good time. MS needs some serious competition.
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Thomas said 8:52AM on 3-10-2006
I love Writely!! It's amazing and I hope Google treats it well.
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Marc Orchant said 8:56AM on 3-10-2006
Much as I enjoy Gmail, there is no way that Gmail and CL2 will replace Outlook for me anytime soon. The functionality isn't even close to being equivalent and Google has not yet demonstrated an ability to provision with "5 9's" uptime. Maybe for a casual user of Outlook but not for business - at least not soon.
Writely is a good tool - lot of growing needed as one of the founders readily admitted yesterday. As to the noton that Google Base has anything close to the potential to "replace" Access? Again, maybe for someone who want to list their comic book collection. Google Base is a fancy list builder, not an application development engine.
Personally, I think these moves will hit OpenOffice harder than Microsoft Office.
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Jnetty said 10:46AM on 3-10-2006
I already dumped Outlook for personal use. I'm all Gmail only. I already use Writely and I'm glad Google acquired them.
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Franklin said 5:41PM on 3-10-2006
I don't see any need for concern for OpenOffice. The way I see it, the combo of OpenOffice and AJAXy office apps like Writely will only weaken Office's domination. OpenOffice is what you use when you want to take your work offline and require a more robust app. Writely is what you use when you're mobile and or don't have ready access to your own computer.
I write documents on Writely, save them on their server, and then save them offline in ODT format to load up on OpenOffice. I have absolutely no need for Microsoft Office -- haven't used it in years. And I use these office applications regularly for my line of work.
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