Google co-founder Sergey Brin has quashed speculation that the giant ad broker is to introduce a web-based Office suite. “We don’t have any plans,” he told Web 2.0 conference organizer John Battelle. However Brin left the door open a little. Documents would be easier to work with in the future, he promised, but he didn’t think a fat client was the way to go.
Google: No Office Suite From Us
62 Comments
2005-10-10 5:16 am
Anonymous
Well, let’s think a little, here. If one extends the idea of online apps further, you basically get an online desktop.
Nope.
Now, since one already has an online desktop, there is no need for a normal one, so the normal desktop can be taken out.
OK.
Here’s the thinking part, if the purpose of having something like this would be to access it from anywhere, and if you’ve basically recreated the desktop,
Sorry, I disagree. Anyone who ‘recreates the desktop’ in a web app is out of touch (see ^ below).
you might as well just use some sort of remote access and circumvent all the indirection and extra work for something we already basically have.
Why? Remote access is resource heavy on both ends (RAM and CPU) and uses gobs of network resourcess.
It also encourages ‘my desktop’ type of environments where data is lost or abandoned easily and not shared.
A web app wouldn’t act like a desktop and wouldn’t store data and make it available like one either.
^ The original concept from the 60s, 70s, and 80s to ‘make the computer look like the meat-space version of a physical office’ was a bad idea. That’s why it has been abandoned. It will not be brought back to life on the web since it makes no sense to do so. The web doesn’t need an interface like Windows or Mac/OSX or X (KDE/Gnome/…) as those interfaces make no sense on the web.
That you bring up ‘the desktop’ at all is puzzling.
2005-10-08 9:21 pm
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Anonymous
because I’m using them for various registration in the net and accepting spams 🙂 while protecting my private one
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Anonymous
Why would anybody want to use an online email client. It doesn’t make any sense.
Because they don’t accept pop/imap connections.
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2005-10-09 6:47 pm
japailAnyone that uses webmail to work with a large amount of e-mail falls well into the functionally-retarded category. If you don’t work with a lot of e-mail, then it doesn’t really matter what you use. In that case the portability of a web interface might be desirable, but it’s nothing you wouldn’t be better served by with a good IMAP client. I for one only use webmail for pseudo-anonymity and signing up for junk.
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2005-10-09 4:54 am
ormandj
Why? Have you ever done IT administration in a large corporate environment? Keeping all the machines running the same (updated) software, keeping everybody virus free, handling all the network mounts, maintaining all the machines, doing installs/provisioning, etc – IS ONE BIG MESS.
How this _could_ solve that problem? Thin clients around the room with access to only the online applications provided (can we say no more websurfing/solitare at work?) I hate to sound like an access nazi, but there is large quantities non-productivity from people blasting around the net when they shouldn’t be, playing games of solitare, and whatever else. Sure, you can setup firewalls to block this and that, but you’re just delaying the inevitible. Somebody will setup some kind of proxy, or who knows what, and circumvent everything.
You’re stuck trying to keep everybody’s OS synchronized, patched, updated, all of the applications too, and whatever else. With thin clients that becomes a simple activity. You just update the server cluster. Now your time is freed up from trying to fix who-knows-what-issue on who-knows-whos computer, and can spend that time making sure the server cluster is up to date, and the network is running well. That is a _heck_ of a lot easier, a _heck_ of a lot better, and would save unmentionable amounts of time all around the office, in things you wouldn’t even imagine. Now you’ll say: but I have X package automatically doing Y thing and blah blah blah. Whatever. I’ve done that too. It’s still a headache, some patches still break some things, viruses get downloaded, people do this and that, there is no foolproof way of doing things correctly with everybody sitting at a full-blown computer. What, yank the cd drives so they can’t keep bringing in livecds? Grr.
That being said, it’s not really there yet (the implimentation/technology or possibly both.) We’re getting awfully close, however, and I am very much looking forward to it – as a business owner who handles administrative duties, with 2500 client pcs. I’ve already gotten a lot of the functionality for the business on the intranet, as web apps, I’m just waiting on something to come along as an online-office-app. Just about everything else is *already there*.
Cheers.
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Anonymous
You seem to be misunderstanding me. I’m all for thin clients. I’m just saying this isn’t the best way to accomplish that goal. Let’s compare web-based apps versus complete remote access:
web-based:
1) every app needs to be recoded to benefit
2) completely different interface compared to normal apps
3) much harder to code
4) disintegrated from everything else
remote access:
1) apps do not need to be changed to benefit
2) familiar interface
3) just as easy to code
4) completely integrated
This means that 1) employees don’t have to be retrained to use it and 2) it’s easier to manage.
-bytecoder
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Anonymous
“1) apps do not need to be changed to benefit
2) familiar interface
3) just as easy to code
4) completely integrated ”
Considering that there’s going to be retraining for those moving to a F/OSS solution anyway…
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Anonymous
This means that 1) employees don’t have to be retrained to use it
What retraining? It’s a web app. People are used to using different web apps.
and 2) it’s easier to manage.
Remote display access is easier to manage? I can’t see how. Web sites with application-like features already handle tens of thousands of users gracefully (pending network speed and processor/RAM; the same thing remote desktop displays suffer much more from).
I get the feeling that you’re making an argument with some built-in preferences/biases … kind of like the IE users kept arguing that nobody needs all those complex tabs found in Opera and Firefox/Mozilla … and that the task bar can handle things in a superior manner.
The good news is that in 6 months, you’ll think that dropping remote access for the more sophisticaed web apps that have come out reciently was your idea.
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2005-10-09 8:49 am
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Anonymous
So basically the push for thin-clients is because of Windows poor design. Well we can also thank them for the push towards ever beefier hardware, and the “Spaceheater” phenomenon.
2005-10-09 2:39 pm
Anonymous
Why would somebody want to use an online office suite. It doesn’t make any sense.
To me, it sounds sweet. Makes total sense.
2005-10-08 9:21 pm
Anonymous
for the time being, they could integrate normal ooo with gmail storage. i mean it would be nice to easily save documents somewhere in the web and be able to access them from everywhere.
what i am reallly looking forward to though is not web-based ooo, but open formats going mainstream. google can do that ;-).
2005-10-08 9:28 pm
Joe User
With the OpenDocument supported in OO.o 2.0, it’s the best moment to go ahead. Google Office compatible with OpenOffice.org: way to go!
2005-10-08 9:32 pm
Anonymous
If you read the last paragraph of the article, it clearly states that nothing in the article was actually true.
2005-10-08 9:33 pm
Anonymous
I don’t think I would like having MY documents on googles servers so that they can search thru them.
So does this mean when I want to edit or view them they will have ads plastered all over the place.
No thanks…
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Joe User
So does this mean when I want to edit or view them they will have ads plastered all over the place.
Exactly. This is all the magic around Google. If you write down your thesis on the human body Google will detect some keywords that you typed and serve pen1s en1argement ads for free
I love Google.
2005-10-08 10:21 pm
rayiner
I’d love to see a decent office webapp along the lines off Gmail. Heck, if it were well-integrated into Gmail and some other services (ala .Mac), I’d have no problem paying a monthly subscription for it.
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Anonymous
Webapps aren’t awesome. So far from it. Ajax is hyped because it gives web developers just a little taste of what a rich client can offer.
The true RIA (Rich Internet Applications) is still a ways off. There’s a big difference between gmail and a full featured word processor.
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rayiner
The true RIA (Rich Internet Applications) is still a ways off. There’s a big difference between gmail and a full featured word processor.
The question is: who needs a full featured word processor? Many people, to be sure. But how many people could get away with a simple word processor? Many more. The beauty of Gmail isn’t that its more powerful than Outlook or Evolution, because it’s not. The beauty of it is that its convenient, has a dead-simple interface, and is powerful enough to be useful to a great number of people. Integration, simplicity, availability: these are powerful concepts. Heck, Apple built quite a successful business on the first two alone!
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Anonymous
The question is: who needs a full featured word processor?
The problem is with just straight HTML, a word processor is going to be extremely clunky.
We’re not going to see much until XAML comes out for Avalon and is backported to XP. Then what we might see is someone like google using xslt to give a rich client experience for both IE and Mozilla-based browsers.
Here’s an example of XUL based webapp. http://www.faser.net/mab/chrome/content/mab.xul
But even then a few years down the road, if we assume that the browser is the thin client that many people predicted, you get into the javascript problem – and if its really suited to large client-side processing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.
2005-10-08 10:26 pm
Anonymous
I don’t see the point of a centralized thin client driven office. I work with documents all the time from many different locations, the way I deal with it is simple, we have a cvs repository back in the office, on desktops, laptops etc we have ms office or if you like OO (it doesn’t matter). I use tortoisecvs to maintain updates, it’s easy and is doable with current technology. I much prefer a fat client on my laptop where I don’t necessarily need to be hooked up to the internet. email is different, I can do email on an internet station at an airport if necessary but to write documents etc I much prefer my own machine.
Finally, I would not like have my documents on a server we havbe no control over by a company which opening reads other people’s work.
2005-10-08 10:29 pm
evert
microsoft already experimented with online office, sharepoint server, etc. onot a big success.
the recent agreement between sun and google means that google has no plans to compete with OOo, only some interesting integration will be possible
2005-10-08 11:03 pm
Anonymous
I wonder if they will do a Microsoft and “We don’t have any plans,” and then do it, Console gaming market ring a bell? 🙂
2005-10-08 11:30 pm
2005-10-08 11:49 pm
Anonymous
The simplicity and power of Googles search engine, in its early days, was a revelation for many. They bought into Googles vision. As its original performance eroded, the initial momentum was maintained by expanding into new areas. The myth created by Google continued.
To some extent, this is paralleled by 3D Realms with the long awaited Duke Nukem Forever game. It was a powerful myth that attracted people, got them talking about it with each other, and became a vehicle for ever growing expectations. For some, it has become their Shangri-La.
People like heroes and villains. Without them we’d never have drama – the rise of expectation, the crash of flawed reality, and the final redemption of the hero before he, in turn, becomes dust and memories. Nothing is perfect, no one lasts forever.
Google have enough sense to know this. If they seized on the fat-client bandwagon, they’d be opening themselves up to delivering failed promises and bleeding away some of their authority, which is why the Sun and Google deal was a mirage.
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades…
2005-10-09 1:11 am
Anonymous
An Ajax based office suite, unless it´s very simple, would be a nightmare to code. It would be much better to use Java (and I don´t like Java very much).
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Joe User
An Ajax based office suite, unless it´s very simple, would be a nightmare to code. It would be much better to use Java (and I don´t like Java very much).
To use Java? What did you smoke? Java is out, it’s way too heavy and bloated, it uses much CPU and takes forever to download. AJAX solves all these issues. It’s difficult to code, be the end user doesn’t have to care about it – It’s our job.
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Anonymous
To use Java? What did you smoke? Java is out, it’s way too heavy and bloated, it uses much CPU and takes forever to download. AJAX solves all these issues. It’s difficult to code, be the end user doesn’t have to care about it – It’s our job.
This is so hilarious. AJAX is just browser based javascript. It’s an order of magnitude slower, bloated and heavier then even java. It’s like programming in ActionScript.
As for those AJAX apps we all love. Thats because all the hard work is done by the browser. HTML is very good at displaying email (especially plain text email). It’s not bad for layout when you have a rigid inflexible template for everything.
Unfortunately HTML is not a very good format for office apps. It’s not flexible enough for word processing. While you can build a spreadsheet using HTML tables, it runs like a turtle and its horrible to use. You certainly couldn’t make a mid-sized spreadsheet anything like a small business might use.
2005-10-09 4:25 am
Anonymous
Well, It seems as If Google COULD take on microsoft if they match their offering.
microsoft=web+software+games
google-sun=web+software+hardware
might as well acquire nintendo to match the xbox.
run the company in a way that makes employe culture obsessed and pressured to always please the giant and hated if one betrays. …sun’s love for apples?
DON’T YOU SEE THE PLAN!!
2005-10-09 5:11 am
Anonymous
The world needs an advertising supported office suite nearly as much as a fish needs a bicycle.
Google does a few things correctly. Time will prove they do a equal number for shit.
2005-10-09 6:36 am
Arcanum-XIII
The last one : http://www.writeboard.com – collaborative text, versioning (only one author edit at a time though), easy, fast, light (no wysiwyg, only textile markup). Brought to you by the 37signals guy (backpack, basecamp). Free, but not in beta
Another one : http://www.writely.com/ – more Wordish, brought you a toolbar, ability to share and so on. Do not work with some modern brother it seem (like Safari, but I didn’t have check). Beta stade, free for now.
And a last one : http://www.jotlive.com/ – but it seem it’s more designed to taking note, not write long document. Commercial stade
So there is NOW lot of these light apps. It’s not perfect (we can not click on any text and edit them automagically, we have to select them and activate the edit mode), but well, it work, and it work well.
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Anonymous
It’s doable in a limited fashion, and has been for years as your examples point out. I had seen the basecamp guys’ writeboard before, but I think for general purpose corporate publishing we’re going to need more functionality *built-in* to the browsers.
The key is to get the lowest common denominator and standards accepted. It’s pretty funny that Microsoft invented XMLHttpRequest years ago, and others have adopted it. So it doesn’t have to be endorsed by the W3C in order to be valid. If IE and Mozilla implement it, then we can consider it “standard”.
Once XAML comes to IE and backported to XP you’ll see a lot of people doing rich browser apps and Mozilla and others will follow. Mozilla XUL has been there for years, but because of a small marketshare, changing APIs, and poor documentation not many people have taken advantage of it. So getting Mozilla to a reasonable market share (almost there now), where Microsoft has to recognize it to a certain extent is key.
Larry Ellison was right about one thing, when he was talking about the networked computer a decade or so ago, but he was a little early and didn’t understand that the functionality would come from the browser. The browser is actually a pretty natural fit for markup , whether that’s any kind of gui or just text. The only problem is getting browsers up to a level of more sophistication; whether that’s from a runtime engine or the functionality of the markup itself.
2005-10-09 8:12 am
evert
have a look at:
http://www.csharphelp.com/archives4/archive623.html?printable=yes
[quote]
Have you ever wanted to incorporate Microsoft Office Technology into your web and windows applications? The Microsoft Office Web Components are a suite of controls released by Microsoft that make this possible.
…
The O.W.C. package contains a spreadsheet, pivot table, chart and data source component. The spreadsheet exactly mirrors the functionality and performance of the desktop version. It supports more rows and columns that the desktop version and its calculation engine is suitable for server-side applications. The chart component can plot over 50 types of charts by default. The chart can render static images or interactive 3D charts that are feature rich and easy to create. The pivot table object can pivot thousands of records inside a web page efficiently. It can source its data from relational databases, XML islands and OLAP cubes. The data source component does not contain a user- interface piece. Instead, it is used by the components for sophisticated data-binding behind the scenes. It also exposes a rich event model and may be used as a stand-alone component.
…
[/quote]
read on:
http://www.csharphelp.com/archives4/archive623.html?printable=yes
2005-10-09 8:15 am
evert
The Office Web Components tool provides view-only functionality for users who do not have Office 2003 installed. By installing this tool, users can view published components and data access pages on the Web without having to install Office 2003. Note: If you do not own an Office 2003 license, the Office Web Components will run with view-only functionality rather than with full interactive functionality. (Data access pages do not require an Office 2003 license, so you will always be able to take advantage of a page’s full interactive functionality.)
2005-10-09 11:29 am
hobgoblin
how about wrapping the app around the data?
as in, every file contains a basic reader/editor for the data…
2005-10-09 4:31 pm
Anonymous
> Once XAML comes to IE and backported to XP you’ll see a lot of people doing rich browser apps and Mozilla and others will follow. Mozilla XUL has been there for years, but because of a small marketshare, changing APIs, and poor documentation not many people have taken advantage of it. So getting Mozilla to a reasonable market share (almost there now), where Microsoft has to recognize it to a certain extent is key.
> Larry Ellison was right about one thing, when he was talking about the networked computer a decade or so ago, but he was a little early and didn’t understand that the functionality would come from the browser. The browser is actually a pretty natural fit for markup , whether that’s any kind of gui or just text. The only problem is getting browsers up to a level of more sophistication; whether that’s from a runtime engine or the functionality of the markup itself.
Agreed, and if you think a little bit further, you find out which big company from Redmond has no interest in OS-independant webapplications. And then it maybe makes sense why they gave and give away a browser for free which they don’t update, at least not with new technologies.
Larry Ellison wasn’t really too early with his idea. He just forgot that there are opponents of webapplications.
2005-10-10 1:07 am
Anonymous
I sure hope the trend isn’t towards centralizing everything. It was the opposite trend that made the PC so successful: moving away from logging into some big central iron and instead having your own machine.
I’m not so sure Microsoft is against web apps, there were articles long ago about MS creating them. The reason I figured they would like them is easier control. If it is running on their machine, they can better prevent unauthorized usage (piracy). Of course any hypothetical MS web app would be tied to Windows. They would be dead against any platform independent web app, I have no doubt.
2005-10-10 4:47 pm
Richard Dale
The original concept from the 60s, 70s, and 80s to ‘make the computer look like the meat-space version of a physical office’ was a bad idea. That’s why it has been abandoned. It will not be brought back to life on the web since it makes no sense to do so. The web doesn’t need an interface like Windows or Mac/OSX or X (KDE/Gnome/…) as those interfaces make no sense on the web.
I agree with you. Although I believe the desktop metaphor was invented for the Xerox Star (1981), and perfected in the Apple Mac (1984). Mac OS X looks a lot less like a desktop than Mac OS 9 did, now you can group docs via search queries, rather than keep them in static ‘folders’.
Alan Kay who invented the WIMP interface at Xerox PARC in the 70s hates the idea of desktop icons of folders and documents. He believes that dynamically searching for docs and putting them in ‘bins’ is a better idea. Much like spotlight does on Mac OS X.
The future is about collaboration over the network, and the thing wrong with a word processor is that it is not designed for colloboration, whether as a PC app or as a web service. It seems a bit like when people used to defend the floppy disk about 5 years ago, word processors deserve to die out like floppies once networking is pervasive.
We need something like a wiki with a better interface, and simultaneous collabaration. Maybe like SubEthaEdit on Mac OS X:
http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/faq.html
Maybe people will stop coming up with wild ideas as to what google will come out with next. People dreaming of Office Suites or Operating systems from google never stop amazing me.
No, people won’t stop. It’s sort of like having tech companies as sports teams. Any given person has his favorite(s) and they’re going to revolutionize the universe or something.
Shame, http://www.thinkfree.com/ is pretty impressive (though their servers were a bit slow when I had a play with it).
He did mentioned:
“I don’t really think that the thing is to take a previous generation of technology and port them directly,” he told Battelle. *However distributed thin web applications allowed you to do “new and better things than the Office package and more.*”
So yeah, they ain’t making a web port of OpenOffice or any other office suite. But maybe because they are planning something better than that. Who knows?
Brin said they had no plan to port OO.o to the web, but he said the idea to make a thin client used as an office application makes sense. Obviously, he doesn’t want to feed the hype, but early or late they will launch an AJAX-powered web Office, or some one else will.
I think making OO.org accessbile via an ajax interface would be the way to go. Look what the guys at http://www.meebo.com have achieved with libgaim
Why would somebody want to use an online office suite. It doesn’t make any sense.
-bytecoder
Why would somebody want to use an online office suite. It doesn’t make any sense.
Why? Because people move more and more, in the office, at home, at the assembly line, on a business trip, in the hotel, etc. If you need to carry your documents and your laptop everywhere, you can get tired quicky. Now, if you have all your documents on the largest datacenter of the world, and can edit them from any computer anywhere in the world with the ease of use of MS Office, it’s another story.
It doesn’t make sense? Think twice. It’s where we’re going to, because the trend is to centralize information, so that it is more easily available and better backed up.
If they were all centralized then all the world’s docs could either be stolen all at once or destroyed all at once.
Now that would be scary.
Then that old saying “Information wants to be free” would be proven true.
[Anonymous (IP: 24.107.196.—)]
The true RIA (Rich Internet Applications) is still a ways off.
Depends on how you define “Rich” I suppose. Guess ActiveX could take a stab at it.
I think the other argument against a thin-client office, the way it works now, not including any revolution that Google may have in mind, is that an AJAX implementation gives you no clear advantage over a local desktop version running. Other than it makes documents more accessible, which you can mimic with some sort of online storage using a regular desktop editing software.
I think the other argument against a thin-client office, the way it works now, not including any revolution that Google may have in mind, is that an AJAX implementation gives you no clear advantage over a local desktop version running. Other than it makes documents more accessible, which you can mimic with some sort of online storage using a regular desktop editing software.
Not if you don’t have that software (or something compatable) already locally installed — and the right version.
Why? Because people move more and more, in the office, at home, at the assembly line, on a business trip, in the hotel, etc. If you need to carry your documents and your laptop everywhere, you can get tired quicky. Now, if you have all your documents on the largest datacenter of the world, and can edit them from any computer anywhere in the world with the ease of use of MS Office, it’s another story.
So the best choice is to write a specialized online office app? I don’t think so. The best way would be allowing you to take your environment with you, e.g. over the internet. No specialization required.
It doesn’t make sense? Think twice. It’s where we’re going to, because the trend is to centralize information, so that it is more easily available and better backed up.
I said having an online office suite doesn’t make sense, not being able to access and modify your documents away from your computer. Having online apps, most definitely, is now hot it’s going to be done, anyway. That is why it doesn’t make sense.
-bytecoder
I said having an online office suite doesn’t make sense, not being able to access and modify your documents away from your computer.
The whole point of an online office suite is to be able to access your documents away from your computer. If you don’t understand this, then of course it won’t make sense for you.
The whole point of an online office suite is to be able to access your documents away from your computer. If you don’t understand this, then of course it won’t make sense for you.
This is neither the best, nor the most straitforward way to go about doing that, and is little more than a hack around a bigger problem. Maybe you should read my post above.
-bytecoder
Achieving the dissemination of documents through homogenized web services with inferior interfaces is not a particularly efficient use of time. The more the interface is improved through moving more ‘thick client’ functionality into the design of the web service framework, the more you sacrifice the ‘everywhere’ in ‘access everywhere,’ as ‘everywhere’ means “everywhere there’s a compliant implementation of the necessary functionality,” which will increasingly just mean “Windows” as this functionality diverges from web standards. And the increase in interface functionality will be necessary if you expect people to adopt the services in place of solutions they already are happy with. That means functional drag and drop between web apps, being able to embed webapps into each other, being able to include large data objects like video and audio, and a limitless number of things that people can already do painlessly.
Moving all of the complexity of the desktop application into a web framework just creates busy-work. At some point you’ve just reinvented the entire wheel and piped it over HTTP to be rendered in a buggy, memory-eating, insecurity conduit so you could store your information remotely. Talk about solving the problem with a hammer.
Thank god somebody gets it.
-bytecoder
Achieving the dissemination of documents through homogenized web services with inferior interfaces is not a particularly efficient use of time.
Why does there have to be a ‘sacrifice’?
Even if the interface were ‘inferior’, you’re forgetting that people in general like easy and quick over complete though complex. For example, MP3 or MPEG encoding vs. lossless encoding. They miss perfection, though what they gain in convienence is substantial.
Having online apps, most definitely, is now hot it’s going to be done, anyway. That is why it doesn’t make sense.
*BLINK*
You’re not serious — are you?
If so, please enlighten us about how it will be done.
Well, let’s think a little, here. If one extends the idea of online apps further, you basically get an online desktop. Now, since one already has an online desktop, there is no need for a normal one, so the normal desktop can be taken out. Here’s the thinking part, if the purpose of having something like this would be to access it from anywhere, and if you’ve basically recreated the desktop, you might as well just use some sort of remote access and circumvent all the indirection and extra work for something we already basically have.
-bytecoder
See: