Writely opens up
by Volker Weber
Writely lets you collaborate on the web with nothing more than a webbrowser:
What you can upload:
- HTML files and plain text (.txt)
- Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text (.rtf) and OpenOffice (.odt, .sxw) files smaller than 500K.
- Image (.gif, .png, .jpg and .bmp) files smaller than 2Mb.
What you can download as:
(from the File menu within the editor)
- Zipped HTML, RTF, and PDF.
- Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.
I expect this to be folded into the Google login soon, so that you only need one account. What do they have now? Word processing, spreadsheet, mail, calendar, address book, instant messaging. And you can leave your computer at home. Neat.
Comments
The only thing that worries me is the content policy. While they explicitly say that you retain copyright to your content submitted through Writely, they also say (under Section 4, subsection "Your Rights"):
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the general public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt and publish such Content on Google services solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. This license terminates when such Content is removed from the Google service to which you originally submitted. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any of the services offered by Google. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.
That seems to give Google fairly wide latitude for distributing your data in various ways. When you post on a blog, you may expect that level of exposure, but when you add something to your calendar, or create a document in Writely, you may not expect to see it show up in Google News or elsewhere.
The single feature that makes me stick with MS Word is its "Track Changes" mode, as I often use it for collaborating with partners and customers. It would be so cool if Writely could understand a Word doc that includes tracking info, and interpret that ...
Ben, I think this only applies to public content:
which are intended to be available to the general public
They want to make sure that they have the right to publish those documents that you marked as available to everyone.
And as much as they allow companies to license their search engine for internal use and have some start into GMail for your domain, I am sure they are thinking of corporate installs of Google Spreadsheet and Writely.
"Leave your computer at home"
IMO, this is exactly the problem with all those online applications, you can't work while disconnected.
Working in a Domino environnement, we all know that offline work is priceless.
As predicted above, Google now has released more applications for a hosting service. "Google Apps for your domain" covers GMail (a.k.a. GoogleMail), GoogleCalendar and GoogleTalk. I bet GoogleSpreadsheets and Writely (probably under a GoogleXYZ name) will follow as soon as they are mature enough?
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