Submitted by The long talked about Google Office is taking shape. At the same time as TechCrunch has displayed screenshots of a possible Google Calendar called CL2, Google has announced that it has acquired Writely, an online, collaborative word-processor creating using JavaScript and DHTML. Documents are saved online (perhaps in Google’s rumoured GDrive). Of particular interest is that GMail, when paired with CL2, provides a decent alternative to Exchange/Outlook, and it was only in November that Google annnounced GMail for Domains, a system whereby Google acts as a company’s mail server, but uses the companies own domain name for the email address.
Provide Office/apps on the web for montly charge. With Gmail, they have done it right and I hope they will done this too.
Let’s see how this will turn out.
My job to beat google with AjaxOffice now 🙂
Add a project manager / collaboratative elements / scheludling / database(spreadsheet) and there ya go fellas… a complete office suite. Packages for all types of companies. It’s the future of Google.
Monthly charges will help Google grow… their current business model needs revision to stay relevant and profitable.
Google for them, I mean good for them
Jb
Hmm… I think you’re underestimating how difficult is to replicate those apps using simple things like Javascript / AJAX.
Most browser implementation are weak or buggy and JS/AJAX simply is not mature enough to allow complex applications perform complex tasks.
Let’s suppose that, with dramatic effort, you can do that, any idea how hard it would be to mantain such applications? You will probably need legions of developers. I guess only Google and Microsoft (perhaps IBM?) could afford such effort…
Hmm… I think you’re underestimating how difficult is to replicate those apps using simple things like Javascript / AJAX.
Google can probably get something “close” with their resources and engineering talent, but yeah, DHTML is so limiting and such a pain in the ass for your average developer.
I’m putting my bets on Flash really taking off in the RIA space because of it’s obvious technical advantages and its consistent crossplatform engine.
Flash is a good platform and has a big advantage: it’s very widespread. By today, it’s by far the best platform to develop good applications in browser context and MS knows that. That’s why XAML was born.
IMO, HTML/AJAX is simply not enough powerful to develop applications like those mentioned and it won’t be until such platform will change dramatically. But if it does, it will loose its best quality: being available to many people. Anyone who tired to develop things like a simple bar menu knows how difficult programming that platform is.
Plus, implementation are not very good so we see simple AJAX applications tieing your 3GHz machine to its knees… naw, I wouldn’t bet a dime on that, unless my employer could provide legions of people like me to develop quite simple applications.
Plus, it’s not realistic that we a 3Ghz machine which brings lots of horse power can be just devoted to run AJAX applications when it could fly using standard ones.
In my opinion, smart clients are future of the Internet, at least in most Western world, where connections are getting faster and faster and PCs are getting more powerful each day.
The whole AJAX bubble is something companies like Google are using to weaken importance of desktop systems, thus weakening Microsoft and its desktop dominance. I can undestand that but that doesn’t mean everyone can do that.
But I wouldn’t recommend any company smaller than Google to bet their money on developing and mantaining complex AJAX apps…
Google can’t weaken Microsoft and it’s desktop dominance. They know this and it’s why they don’t even target Linux for their installable apps.
What it can do is to get a bunch of people to have their data on Google servers. The whole thing with GMail is that you can get it anywhere on any machine. Gmail sucks as a real application, but it’s nice because you just fire up a browser.
The AJAX hype will die down and AJAX will just be what is expected among normal web pages that have a little bit of app-like functionality. Basically, it’ll just be “the standard”. And that’s cool because AJAX does give you much more usability, and Google’s new spider is very smart and can crawl all of that Javascript supposedly.
But with Flash’s 98% market penetration of Flash 6 and above, it’ll become the next step in delivering real richness to the web. Java is dead obviously and if Microsoft ever puts XAML in IE then you’ll see a mad rush to get that similiar functionality on other browser platforms.
I wonder how they’ll deny this story and the many more to come even though the writing has been on the wall for a while. If they keep this up, they’re going to really piss Microsoft off and cause them to start innovating again. Then again, they just might buy Google and laugh all the way to the bank.
Then again, they just might buy Google and laugh all the way to the bank.
If the competition authorities don’t bar that. MS is declared a software vendor wielding monopoly powers. It should be difficult to kill your competition by a buyout under those circumstances.
No matter how many shares they buy they can’t have voting rights which equals no control over the company. As far i know their shares have unequal voting rights , weighted in the founder’s favour.
Actually, Microsoft is well aware of this, hence their Windows Live! and Office Live! services that offer things like GDrive and shared contacts.
I wonder how they’ll deny this story and the many more to come even though the writing has been on the wall for a while. If they keep this up, they’re going to really piss Microsoft off and cause them to start innovating again. Then again, they just might buy Google and laugh all the way to the bank.
And if you knew anything about Google, you would know the shares the insiders of the company hold have 10 times the voting power of the publically owned shares. In other words, Microsoft could buy every single public share of Google and Sergey+Larry would still have complete control over the company.
In other words, not going to happen. Unless Microsoft buys Larry and Sergey’s shares up, which I feel is unlikely.
Google calendar pics in a click (also, 8 pics rather then 2):
http://jaduncan.net/google-calendar-cl2-leaked-pictures
Edited 2006-03-10 14:22
But here we go again with the whole “Google Office.” Next will be talk of Google Linux again. Hopefully this time around we will get Goontoo. Google version of Gentoo, where the your build settings at home are sent to the uber-fast Google servers where your system is compiled and then sent back to your machine fully assembled.
I don’t think these are really meant to be used for a full-time office suite, maybe just for those on always on the go or maybe students. Google has said that they are creating an office suite. Maybe it all has to do with wording. Maybe all they were doing was pulling a “Clinton.” Define: “Office Suite”
JRM7
The secret is that they are working on google for cars, where the car will actually take you to the restaurant, based on some natural language search engine…
I’m waiting for one of the big email providers to provide IMAP mail. I really don’t like webmail clients. I’d rather user desktop clients – in fact I want to switch when I feel like it – Outlook, Balsa, Evolution, whatever! I don’t want POP access (which I have), because I don’t want my mailed scattered around – an NO, leave-on-server is not the same thing. I have a whole directory structure of mail with many subfolders. Gmail should be able to do this, and Yahoo too. I would pay extra!
Writely is excellent. I’ve been using it for over a month now and it’s solid.
I hope Google doesn’t muck it up.
Question:
Writely is built on Microsoft’s ASP.NET.
I’m not aware of google offering any services running on MS platforms.
How will Writely fit into Google’s software architecture?
they might use mono, or maybe if port it to another platform. But I see mono as the most likely option at the moment
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there is nothing stops google to use .Net and windows . Google is not linux.
However, they may just get the idea and re-write the whole server side using Java or Python, and use the javascript part of it from the original. That is the most difficult part of that application anyway.
If they did a re-write, I’d say it would be in Python, since it’s easy and more condusive to iterative rapid development (a necessity in this problem domain), and Guido Van Rossum (Python’s Benevolent Dictactor for Life) works for them.
I also find it likey for them to do re-write, since their entire infrastructure is based on an internal customized version of Red Hat, with some Solaris thrown in. With that, and the fact that this mix has been so fabulously functional, efficient, reliable, and successful, I find it highly unlikey that they would introduce Windows servers into the mix, just so they can ASP.Net based Writely.
Re-writing ASP.Net code to something like Python shouldn’t be to difficult.
i would not be so sure, many google services are actually working on Java. Long before Guido Van Rossum several Java gurus (including Joshua Bloch from Sun, Adam Bosworth from BEA) went to Google and they are working on Java related tasks. i do not think Google has a preference on over another. At the end, my personal opinion i disagree that Python is a better choice here if a re-write is required , especially if C# is being used. Plus, Java is more mature, fast and scalable then Python, and it has tons of tools, libs and IDE’s Python cannot come close. bah.. endless language and platform debates..
!!! !!!
“Plus, Java is more mature, fast and scalable then Python, and…”
???????? ??????? ?????????
Java might be more scalable than Python, and maybe more mature,
but IS NOT FASTER than Python at all… even taking into account that the newer versions of Java are quicker than before…
Angel
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Now on this, i can easily bet that Java beats python in majority of the tests brutally. bring it on.
the bleow link compares even an older java version (1.4) with Python.. not sure about the quality of the codes and microbenchmarking is not really a measure, but the difference is huge. i think it proves i am correct.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=p…
Okay – LANGUAGE WAR!!!! 😉
Java is more mature, full featured, fast, scalable, and has more libraries and IDEs and supporting products, than Python.
With those things in mind, Java would be better.
But Python is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier than Java. Ironically, this is the same argument people used to make when making the switch from C++ to Java. Now Java is bloated, over-complicated behemouth, losing some mindshare to lighter, more agile, easier, fully interpreted languages like PHP, Python, and Ruby.
For fast, easy, iterative, dynamic web apps, like this Writely thing might be, Python might be better suited.
But, of course, Java is getting much better – it’s getting speedier, and it’s getting cleaner, and EJB mess is being replaced with both Spring and EJB3, and it’s supporting scripting languages (dynamically typed, fully interpreted), like beanshell and Groovy.
And, in actuallity, Java or Python might not be the best choice. Mono would be, being that the original code base is ASP.Net – very easy transition!
Ah, what fun it is to waste valuable time arguing about programming languages!
!!!!
“Now on this, i can easily bet that Java beats python in majority of the tests brutally. bring it on.
the bleow link compares even an older java version (1.4) with Python.. not sure about the quality of the codes and microbenchmarking is not really a measure, but the difference is huge. i think it proves i am correct.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&la…”
————–
NOW ON THAT … this graphics just prove how much memory java consumes…
If theoretically the code is quicker, what i’m not sure neither, and because of the extreme use of memory the PC get bloated and stuck… then is not quick , Sorry!!!
so reality is that PCs using java get so easily bloated that they are not quick at all, even in the improved last version!!!
I have not seen any refereces on the hardware and amount of memory usef for the tests. And, also is an Open source site , which apparently try to show the superiority of Python over Java…
So the conclusion is that probably the test has been done with plenty of memory, i guess.
What matters is the reality, the facts .. and with the same amount of memory my PCS and any PC I have seen/tryed get bloated and slow with java, and they are slower than with Python.
I have never seen a Formula 1 Ferrari or Renault trying to carry 10 tons of weight… If you are overloaded, u can not be quick, that is a fact.
And the same applies to CPUs, and Software…
Angel
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dude, those memory mesaurements are not really reflects the reality. java heap can always be limited without effecting the performance really. you talk about performance, in that link java seems to be more than 100 times faster then python in three tests, 19, 25 , 49 and 60 times in four of them.. come on know how can you talk about performance?
they might use mono, or maybe if port it to another platform. But I see mono as the most likely option at the moment
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I agree. It shouldn’t be too hard to port to mono and it would be completely cross platform if it was done, although Google hasn’t made many cross platfrom apps.
I agree. It shouldn’t be too hard to port to mono and it would be completely cross platform if it was done, although Google hasn’t made many cross platfrom apps.
Ummm….we’re talking about code on Google’s servers, not something you yourself would run.
Ummm….we’re talking about code on Google’s servers, not something you yourself would run.
I’m not so sure you know how ASP.NET works. It is a little like Java based web apps. You actually need the JVM to use Java based web apps. Without compatible software you won’t be able to run the application.
Orkut is built on Microsoft’s ASP.NET
I remember during the ages of Windows 98 and such, and probably today as well, how important it was that a single app can’t bring down the whole system and that they work in separate memspace etc etc?
What really confuses me is how people forget. Now we’re expected to run Webmail (Lotus etc) together with webbased office suites etc…. so when dear IE/Safari/Mozilla/Opera/Etc crashes, all your apps will crash simultaneously… similar to the problem you experience with “bringing the system down”…
So what is the next step? Open 7 instances of your browser as separate processes? Wow, that’s ehhrr.. that’s brilliant …
Me personally will stick to local apps, with a smart deployment model instead… and for some “seldom used” apps, the remote thingie will work.
The difference here is that it is web based. If done correctly you should be able to restart your browser and have all you information right where you left off. After all the information is actually on the server, not your computer. You would still have to worry about the server crashing but I think you have more of a chance of your PC crashing than the server. Now i’m not sure how they are impelementing this technology but like I said before, if done right it could actually be more reliable than having your applications on the desktop.
abraxas: If done correctly you should be able to restart your browser and have all you information right where you left off.
You could do the same thing with a local application. All it has to do is a keep the data you’re currently editing in some format and constantly update it as you change it. It just needs to make sure to flush the data all the time and that the format will be valid even if the app crashes. For example, it could keep an append-only log of all changes and apply all changes automatically after you startup the app again.
abraxas: You would still have to worry about the server crashing but I think you have more of a chance of your PC crashing than the server.
You need to also worry about “something inbetween crashing”. For example, the local internet connection. You may not have internet access in all areas or it may temporarily crash locally.
You need to worry about firewalls and other security measures, potentially getting in your way. You also need to worry about compatibility with whatever web browser you end up using.
You could do the same thing with a local application. All it has to do is a keep the data you’re currently editing in some format and constantly update it as you change it. It just needs to make sure to flush the data all the time and that the format will be valid even if the app crashes. For example, it could keep an append-only log of all changes and apply all changes automatically after you startup the app again.
That’s a lot more taxing on your PC though.
You need to also worry about “something inbetween crashing”. For example, the local internet connection. You may not have internet access in all areas or it may temporarily crash locally
I don’t think this is going to be primarily used as an internet application so much as an intranet application. Yes it would be a problem if your network connection went down but you could access your work where you left off from any other computer on that network and pick up where you left off. In my opinion the overall the benefits outweight the drawbacks.
I would be surprised if Google is not:
1) Developing a calendar to go with gMail. Outlook, and every other major email client has done this and there is absolutely no reason to think that Google would be blind to the elephant in the room.
2) develop office ‘applets’ that access ODF documents on Google servers. Sure, ‘Excel in Javascript’ would suck, but there is no reason that you can’t have an old-fashoned, cells-only spreadsheet that you access via URL. Something like all of the ‘smart grids’ in ActiveX that were everywhere in 2000. They could have other applets to ‘chart’ the data in the URL (drag a URL onto a formatted chart), give the new chart a URL and you can share the chart with anyone and reference it in your on-line presentations. We all know that is is perfectly possible to view Powerpoint presentations on-line, a read-only applet for presentations is nearly trivial.
Google Office doesn’t have to be an application as much as a ‘swarm’ of applets. This may as well be ODF-based, since Goggle wants to ‘do no evil’ and this would also give momentum and visibility to a major anti-Microsoft Office tool. Then we can build ODF with Google Office for ‘people’ and IBM/Oracle/Sun/… tools for ‘companies’ It may not work, but this seems like the best current tactic to challenge MS Office.
Even if the change of suceess is small (a few percent), this is a pretty safe bet since the cost of implemantion is measured in hundreds of developer-years. Which is small change for billion dollar companies, especially if they use developers from all over the globe.
Google wants to be a $100 Billion company in the future. If they were to “not be evil” and charge a nominal fee for businesses using services like Web Office / G Drive (secure remote backup), Google Earth, Google for domains, etc, they could achieve this.
Edit:
http://www.physorg.com/news11360.html
As much as Microsoft hates webservices because they are platform independent, they pre-empted google with Office Live. With some google love, this could be an Office Live competitor and further encroach on the Microsoft cash cow (Office). All google is doing is forcing companies to innovate or die. Keep it up!
Edited 2006-03-10 15:23
Google is already a $100 billion dollar company if market value is your measure.
Office live is not a web-based MS Office. It is just webhosting for businesses. I have seen people repeatedly make that error. Certainly MS’s marketing department must have seen this potential product confusion, then again remeber when all their products were ambiguously being named .net 🙂
Lol, Office Live is a shitty web hosting package, nothing more.
Umm … using a Google web-based word processor to store my documents on Google’s servers at Google’s data center …
No thanks. I’ll stick with Word and my own PC.
Edited 2006-03-10 15:42
!!!
“Umm … using a Google web-based word processor to store my documents on Google’s servers at Google’s data center …
No thanks. I’ll stick with Word and my own PC. ”
———–
UHMMMM … NO THANKS.. I WILL STICK TO OpenOffice, OR KDE Office, OR AbiWord… !!!!!!!
Angel–Fr@gzill@
Hello,
Here is a link with lots of info and pics.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/08/exclusive-screenshots-google-c…
Now everyone who cries copycat when Microsoft copies google, where are you guys? Now you are calling it innovation?
Microsoft had a planned version of online office in 2001 with their hailstorm initiative but it got canned because it was competing with Microsoft regular office.
Microsoft has online outlook that works with exchange and it is by-far the best online client.
Google for domain, they totally copied it from Microsoft again. Windows live announced the domain live back in october or november of last year.
Nah i don’t think google is innovating anything. The only good work Google has done is in search and that is appreciable. Other good thing they did was 2GB mail account. Other than that, most of their tools are not high quality.
MSN desktop search is far far better than google desktop search.
On the email client horizon, again Microsoft started with rich client approach and yahoo followed, you will see google coming in third here as well.
Edited 2006-03-10 17:44
!!! !!!
Unfortunately You are right in many things, in almost all, except that in fact google do innovate…
But Microsoft will not try to impose a web Office cause it will damage theit revenues.
Only they will go this way if forced by an overwhelming use of a future Google web Office…
.. and if they do it, they are likely to fall down, cause if people and companies can have doubts about using a google web office and google servers (security, privacy…), they DO NOT have any doubt about MS.
Any doubt at all… Simply because they DO NOT TRUST Ms to use a web based MS Office Suite and his servers… Tehn, if Ms try to compete with google in that domain, they will crash!
The only bad news is, that a succesfull Google web office WILL NOT be of much help for the Free/Libre/OpenSource software movement…
I do not see Google freeing the source code of that ..
Angel
I think I’ll stick with MS Office or Open Office for my office needs. IMO, aside from searching, everything from Google seems very half baked.
I’m not a old player into the IT field but I been working enough to see a pair of “next-big-things” going up and down. For me, this “Google-Office” is not one of those things.
Google wants EVERYTHING and is going to play hard here. They have the minds and dollars to achieve. Of course they will offer much of the tools they are working on for free but I suspect they are envisioning an all-in-one corporate solution focused initially on mid-size business (usually the ones less afraid to take some risks in order to save money)
Wouldn’t be great to have a bunch of clustered linux servers running that “Google Corporate Server” on your Data Center and providing e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging and office tools to your end-users? Wouldn’t be great to avoid maintaining those servers and have the choice of storing everything off-site (of course, if you, as a Company, what to take that “risk”…)
Believe me, I know of many small and mid-size companies in my Country that would pay for that if that means a cost reduction in end-user and desktop support.
In a time where so much interest is put into the desktop (linux desktop, Vista, Office 12 GUI, etc.) is nice to read something new.
Go Google Go!
And why wouldn’t google allow you to save your documents locally? And load them from you local machine?
CuriosityKills:
Now everyone who cries copycat when Microsoft copies google, where are you guys? Now you are calling it innovation?
Microsoft had a planned version of online office in 2001 with their hailstorm initiative but it got canned because it was competing with Microsoft regular office.
Microsoft has online outlook that works with exchange and it is by-far the best online client.
Google for domain, they totally copied it from Microsoft again. Windows live announced the domain live back in october or november of last year.
Nah i don’t think google is innovating anything. The only good work Google has done is in search and that is appreciable. Other good thing they did was 2GB mail account. Other than that, most of their tools are not high quality.
MSN desktop search is far far better than google desktop search.
On the email client horizon, again Microsoft started with rich client approach and yahoo followed, you will see google coming in third here as well.
Excellent post. I would give you a +ve vote but i am out of votes right now. But you sure can expect bunch of negative votes from microsoft hating pensises who can’t face the truth.
Why bother to write it in Python, Java, etc when it is already written. If they need to rewrite then why did they even bother to buy the company in the first place, surely they could have written this themselves?
Can someone poin to a Java based web application that doesn’t look crap, not a troll, I would genuily like to know, maybe I already use one but don’t know it.
Ummm, they’re talking about writing the code that runs on Google’s servers in Java, not the actual applet itself. Sheesh people, pay attention.
Agreed.
Personally, I hope they leave in it ASP.NET.
But if Google is going to go with with a bigger on-line office commitement, they’d have to buy into .NET big time.
I can’t see an office suite where Writely would be .net, and it’s spreadsheet counterpart being based on Java.
Having said that, I’d love to see .net being a big part of googles offerings.
Bravo for Google. They know what people want. A computer is not a box I have to administer, it’s a set of services and media. Space-shifting that to their servers helps me in several ways …
1) compatibility gains:
Now compatibility simply means having a browser that supports the necessary functions. That’s a lot easier than traditional software requirements.
2) mobility gains:
Now I can access my media and services from anywhere with an Internet connection and a capable client.
3) maintenance gains:
Gradually the computer experience should become less about what I like to call “housekeeping” (updating, patching, spyware and virus scanning, partitioning, defragging, organizing, optimizing, installing the missing libraries, etc.) and more about something that “just works”. (Think read-only USB keys with Firefox)
Perhaps Google will be the first company to actually realize the *old* network computer saying “The network IS the computer.”
PS
By the way, I think I called this (more or less) back in February…
See my posts “Why I think Google is targeting Windows Live”
[http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=13533&comment_id=92462]
and
[http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=13533&comment_id=92466]