Google buys Writely
09 Mar 2006Google has just confirmed to have bought Upstartle, the creators of Writely (Writely Blog/GoogleBlog via Om Malik). Apart from being good news for the founders of Upstartle, this also indicates Google’s determination to make the fat client history and allow users to do all their business through on-line services.
Now buying Writely is in line with Google thinking of using browser for everything. I mean an online word processor, and online excel spread sheet make a lot more sense than making people switch to OpenOffice.
Om Malik
Om started making a Microsoft office/Google Office comparison matrix, and I took the liberty of adding some stuff to it:
Productivity on-line
I will list a number of (‘productivity’) application types, with the current (‘fat client’) most used software, and the on-line web2.0-ish (‘thin client’) applications that are trying to take over (although for some areas the online applications are only just at the beginning):
- Word processor:
MS Word - Writely, ZohoWriter, gOffice, Writeboard + JotSpot/JotLive and other wiki’s
- Spreadsheet:
MS Excel - WikiCalc, TracksLife, NumSum
- Presentation:
MS Powerpoint - S5, Thumbstacks
- Email:
MS Outlook - Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail
- Calendar:
MS Outlook - Google Calendar (CL2), Kiko and more on Mashable
- To-do lists:
MS Outlook - TadaList, Voo2Do
- Project Management:
MS Project - Backpack, ZohoPlanner
- Instant Messaging:
MSN Messenger - Meebo, Campfire
- Image editing:
Adobe Photoshop - PXN8, Pixoh
- Image management:
Google Picasa - Flickr, Riya
- Database:
MS Access/MS SQL Server - Google Base
(Might be updated – send your remarks!)
A lot of inspiration came from Dion Hinchcliff, Techcrunch, Mashable and Webosphere.
