Google just needs an annoying mascot, than offers inane hints, gets in the way and generally just pisses you off. Aka Microsoft's "Clippy". Then the office suite is complete.

"I see you're searching for fetish porn pictures.. would you like me to help?"

ANYTHING is better than Word.

this is great news. i wonder if gdrive will be released when writely becomes googlewrite or something.

I have written about a number of the next candidates for Google to aquire when I covered Microsoft's office live's failures : http://www.folknology.com/blog/1/1/2006/2/16/35

The question is which one will be next ?

regards
Al

Google Base isn't really like a database program is it?

Google Office is clearly on the way. I hope that they rebrand Writely (and redo the UI) soon but carefully to keep it a decent product.

Name guesses? Google Write? Google Text? Google Word (dare they?) Google Docs?

If google is trying to decentralize personal computing, they they only have to fill in a few more gaps before the concept could become a reality:

1) An all purpose media player... Google Video is great, but something to play mp3s online (after storing them on gdrive) would be even better.

2) An online photo-editing program such as the one mentioned earlier (Pixoh)

3) and, as Phillip said, a program to work with spreadsheets.

By doing this you would have created a fully portable software package available to edit anything and everything stored on your gdrive. All you would be missing is a place to link it all together... something along the terms of a MyGoogle page.

To speculate even further... Google Cube could be something similar to the hardware created by the "One Laptop per Child" program... A $100 dollar laptop with not hard-drive; just an internet connection.

yeah i agree, they should redo the UI. maybe they'll get this team to develop a google excel, access, and powerpoint.

now we need google to release their own version of linux.

> Name guesses?

Hmmm... Google Pad, Google Writer, Google Words, Google Notes, Google Text, Google Documents... I think Google Write is the most likely though.

Google Base isn't a database program at all. To complete the suite, Google seemingly needs to provide an alternative to Powerpoint, Access, and Excel. As much as I dislike Microsoft programming, Excel really is an excellent program.

But as for Powerpoint, doesn't the web itself work fine as an alternative? Maybe the nice transition effects warrant writing an entire application.

And as for Access, does that even belong in an office suite?

Gjotter

the funny part.. No disclosure on CAPEX!!

for ppt type presentations it will be ...:)-

http://www.thumbstacks.com

The Writely FAQ says: "Coming to Google will eventually give us a leg up on getting things done that we just haven’t been able to with our tiny team."

That's about the same as Blogger said when they were bought by Google. But look what happened – Blogger is now way behind the curve compared to (say) WordPad. Blogger got the storage and the bandwidth, but I suspect not the extra manpower that they needed.

Roger: IMHO Google bought Blogger for its community. Writery is bought for technology. So it´s diferent examples. And what else – just wait. I believe that this year Google will present new community service included orkut, Blogger and something like flickr, digg and del.icio.us

Its funny how when Google acquires another company and Google gets closer to a fully implemented Office suite (and with recent rumors of Google's 100% online data storage for users)... a Google fan starts one of the "crowd waves" that spread throught the world and back. Sorry but i have an imagination =)

I guess it was a matter of time before they bought out Writely, lets see how long it takes them to buy Digg.

> Google Base isn't a database program at all.

It still needs an API for sure... but then?

Online AJAX PowerPoint is DEFINITELY going to be a reality Shortly

Online AJAX PowerPoint is DEFINITELY going to be a reality Shortly!!!!!

I think they'll acquire NumSum.com as their Excel application. No doubt they have a great product there, so Google don't wait up!

Philipp – an API for Gbase will not do!!

Gbase can neither be normalized or rationlized!! The structure is more like a tag garden without structure that whats makes it good for the community uaage not strcutured use.

Lets put the dichomaty of thought into prospective from an application view point and/or developers POV.. does Gbase = MySQL ?

Absolutely Not!

GBase!= MySQL

Writely was bought for technology? I fail to see anything in Writely that Googlenerds haven't already solved or couldn't solve in a few weeks. Take gmail, enable document collaboration (really the only hard challenge here) and .pdf and .doc export, and that's it, problem solved. So I can only imagine they bought Writely mainly so that they get the talent AND competitiors get neither the talent nor the technology.

But it does make the question more interesting than ever: what are all those Googlenerds working on?

Google nerds work on Google Pages...

But look at MS is doing: Office 2007. And it looks really beautiful.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/03/09/547281.aspx

> GBase!= MySQL

Well, just to clarify I didn't compare Google Base to a straight database system... I said it's a sort of database. That could mean: it's a database for those who find traditional databases to complicated. Or: it's a database in another 5 years with more new features.

> Gbase can neither be normalized

On the other hand MySQL also has no foreign keys by default (AFAIK you need a non-default InnoDB engine).. and we still call it a database...

I am not a big NumSum fan. They need to work on their UI a bit more. And make it more desktopy.

I just wish their next scramble will be billmonk I absolutely love it
http://digg.com/links/BillMonk.com_-_Social_Money_Tracker,_Great_for_Students

Ok I'll agree on that Philipp wrt Innodb.. :)-

but still theres that gap --they are going head on head against live.com and there are still perceived gaps that need to be bridge fast and lightening quick-else the community will have to be embedded with webified products of MSFT.

From Slashdot:

"What starts in beta....stays in beta."

hey guys..fwiw ..note that Mike A (echcrunch) is now posting on thumbstacks!!

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/09/thumbstacks-ajaxflash-web-powerpoint/

yeah yeah, but you heard it here first!! :)-

TechCrunch is really slow ever since the Google Calendar screenshots :)
Right now, it says, "The connection was reset."

Writely appears to be written in ASP .NET; I wonder how this will fit in google's infrastructure (It won't be the only one: Google's black sheep Orkut was also written in ASP) Maybe they'll rewrite it? They did mention something about "until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture"...

This being said, Microsoft would probably have been a better match for Writely; but Microsoft was probably to busy building their own "corporate-grade" version.

heres a good spin on the google strategy

http://www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/2006/03/10/index.php#001262

I gotta say I cant wait to get cracking on this. I used word for too long and anything that stops me from using microsoft products is a good thing.

for a name, how about G-Pro?

pd"heres a good spin on the google strategy
"www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/2 ..."

I find that article very interesting, because if you think about it for a second you'll see that google has much of the pieces already in place for a seamless online/offline integration.

Let's take a look at the tools they already have with offline/online:
Google Earth – Google Maps
Google Video Player – Google Video
Google Adwords Editor(desktop tool) – Adwords
Google Desktop – Google Search & Personalized Home Page
Google Mini – Google Search
Gmail Pop Access/Gmail Notifier – Gmail
Google Talk – Gmail Chat

Other Examples:
Google Desktop Web Clips – Google Reader/Gmail Web Clips
Picaso – Upload picture directly to blogger/send pictures directly through gmail
Blogger for Microsoft Word(remember that) – Blogger
Google News – included in Google desktop panel

What's Missing:
Picaso – no online picture service or integration (except for blogger/gmail integration or unless you count Google images)
Froogle – no offline version or integration (unless you count the new local shopping feature or the SMS feature)
Google Pack – hmm, well it does have an online interface, maybe more is coming?
Writely – hmm, maybe some partnership or integration with OpenOffice

Am I forgetting anything? As you can see, almost all their major online products has an offline version/ integration.

If you think about the above, it's easy to see that google is ahead of yahoo, and just behind microsoft in the number of matches/integration of offline and online services. In fact, all the seemingly unfocused array of products all of a sudden makes perfect sense when you take the offline/online integration view of this. This must be their strategy. And it means that we won't only see future updates in their online products, but further integration with their offline products.

In fact, it even makes sense now why they spend so much money having their desktop products distributed through dell, lenova, hp and others – they are trying to set people up to push this offline/online strategy. They actually have a strategy, and it seems like they are following a similar strategy for mobile.

I may be wrong on this, but it seems to me that right now there are no other companies that has this level of online/offline integration/matching of services other than Microsoft, Apple, and Google. And only one started on the web first – google.

accounts on witely are blocked.
I don't need mine, if you want to test it it's on sale here:
http://cgi.ebay.it/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7226155399&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1