Simon (S2) writes "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 (pictured below). 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. "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."" No Office Suite Google Log in/Create an Account | Top | 163 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 163 comments 0: 153 comments 1: 123 comments 2: 76 comments 3: 38 comments 4: 20 comments 5: 14 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Why Not? (Score:3, Interesting) by BoldAC (735721) on Sunday October 09, @12:18PM (#13750878) (http://www.tech-recipes.com/) With all the press they received about it... they should.I know that many of us thought it would be the first direct attack against Microsoft, [ Reply to ThisRe:Why Not? by andersbergh (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @12:20PM Re:Why Not? (Score:5, Insightful) by mabhatter654 (561290) on Sunday October 09, @12:47PM (#13751022) If I were them, the plan's wouldn't be to release ANOTHER competing office suite, but to work within what's already out there. Once OpenDocument takes off, you'll be able to create tiny tools that work with the standard file format... something like a huge suite won't have to exist anymore... Look what Apple's been doing with Pages... It's a whole new way of using documents.. that makes it much easier for those who just want a pretty sheet of paper. When opendocument takes off, you'll be able to use all that wonderful Googlieness without a 100 meg program open to just type a grocery list. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Why Not? by I'm Don Giovanni (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:01PMRe:Why Not? by Mozk (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:36PMRe:Why Not? by Breakfast Pants (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @03:39PMRe:Why Not? by RedNovember (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:06PMRe:Why Not? by laffer1 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:36PM The Power of the OpenDocument Approach (Score:4, Interesting) by The Monster (227884) on Sunday October 09, @03:23PM (#13751722) (http://slashdot.org/) I've made this point any number of times. Because the OD formats use PKZIPped XML, you can do meaningful work on them with the classic Unix approach of small tools that do one thing well.As an example, my employer recently changed its name (again). It's really simple to write a little shell script to unzip filea, s/oldname/newname/g, and zip back up, without ever needing an 'office application' at all.Google might want to use its server farm to gather information requested, and construct an *.od* on the fly to download to the user. After all, they already do it with HTML. It can't be all that difficult to do XML instead, and send the output to a compression program. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Why Not? by Mjec (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @06:49PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Why Not? by Maian (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:01PMRe:Why Not? by rufty_tufty (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:31PMRe:Why Not? by Bendejo (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @07:33PMRe:Why Not? by iceanfire (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @01:38PMRe:Why Not? by localudal (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @06:22PMRe:Why Not? by andersbergh (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @12:34PM Re:Why Not? (Score:5, Interesting) by hpavc (129350) on Sunday October 09, @01:18PM (#13751159) (http://www.protest.net/) Yeah, a simple and supported 'save/open this document to/from google' for staroffice/openoffice/msoffice would be insane. A little love for publishing and saving the documents (ala yahoo briefcase).Then the industry can think about it.Imagine a google 'document mangement, backup, revision control' product for your personal and office documents. Not to mention the sexy search. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Why Not? by andersbergh (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:25PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Why Not? by tuxguy (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @03:41PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. WebNotepad? (Score:2, Interesting) by NFJ25 (855891) on Sunday October 09, @12:23PM (#13750907) It may not be a full office, but it seams they are planning something... [ Reply to ThisRe:WebNotepad? by Durinthal (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @12:56PMRe:WebNotepad? by andersbergh (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:23PMnotepad.yahoo.com by JPriest (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @01:25PMRe:notepad.yahoo.com by MikeURL (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:21PM Damn slashdot submitters! (Score:5, Insightful) by ElGameR (815688) on Sunday October 09, @12:23PM (#13750911) ...conference organizer John Battelle (pictured below)... I don't see any picture below...I hate it when story submitters just copy and paste from other news articles, not even giving them credit. It occasionally causes phrases that don't make sense, like this one. [ Reply to ThisRe:Damn slashdot submitters! by Donny Smith (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @12:29PM Re:Damn slashdot submitters! (Score:5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09, @12:57PM (#13751064) Yes there is a picture of John Battelle below.W             xxxxxxx     WW            xxx     x    WW            xxx     x    WW            xxx---O-O    WW        /\  /\      \    WW  _  /\/ /  \|      _\   WW | |/ / /    |\    _|    WW | | / /\      \____|    WW |      /\               WW  \      /               W [ Reply to This | ParentMod parent up by Sirch (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @01:07PM Re:Damn slashdot submitters! (Score:4, Interesting) by BushCheney08 (917605) on Sunday October 09, @02:13PM (#13751386) Gotta love this little bit from the end of TFA: Picture credit: John C Dvorak Yes folks, this bird was intended for everyone's favorite tech pundit. [ Reply to This | Parent1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold. What good? (Score:5, Interesting) by free space (13714) on Sunday October 09, @12:27PM (#13750930) What good is a web based office suite anyway? ( not a rhetorical question...I'm really wondering)Allowing people to collaborate on the same document online,is already possible in traditional office suites+groupware. And centralized storage of documents is avaliable via, you know, Yahoo Briefcase.so what exactly would a web office suite bring to the table, aside from the coolness factor? [ Reply to ThisRe:What good? by lixee (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @12:35PMRe:What good? by emmetropia (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @12:36PMRe:What good? by free space (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @12:42PMRe:What good? by level_headed_midwest (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @12:53PMRe:What good? by I'm Don Giovanni (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:08PMRe:What good? by haystor (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:38PMRe:What good? by level_headed_midwest (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:55PMRe:What good? by slashdotnickname (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @01:16PMRe:What good? by ScottSCY (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:31PMRe:What good? by andrewman327 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @04:00PMRe:What good? by jez9999 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:28PMRe:What good? by bcmm (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @04:42PMRe:What good? by jp10558 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @07:24PMRe:What good? by neo (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @01:47PMRe:What good? by InsaneGeek (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @05:30PMRe:What good? by jp10558 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @07:26PMRe:What good? by neo (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:48PMRe:What good? by m50d (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @01:52PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:What good? by LeonGeeste (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:20PMRe:What good? by bcrowell (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @07:18PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Y'know... (Score:5, Insightful) by Otter (3800) on Sunday October 09, @12:32PM (#13750951) (Last Journal: Sunday October 09, @11:09PM) I like Google, I really do. So far today, I've used the search engine, GMail and Froogle, and it's still before lunch on a Sunday.But this notion of them as the new Microsoft is just delusional. Journalists have jumped on it because it's a fun story, investors have to explain the ludicrous stock price and Slashbots have because a web-based, subscription-based, proprietary office suite with who-knows-what file formats seems like a fantastic idea if it will involve sticking it to Microsoft.Look. This is a company with a great indexing and ranking engine, a great backend and a great sense of design and offering value to customers. That's, uh, great, it really is. Google should be proud. But to say that they can just bang out a Javascript-based office suite because you guys think it would be fun is simply nuts. It's not like they have magic powers over there, no matter what the cafeteria serves. [ Reply to This You are overestimating the effort (Score:5, Insightful) by brunes69 (86786) <slashdotNO@SPAMkeirstead.org> on Sunday October 09, @01:11PM (#13751127) (http://www.keirstead.org/) Google should be proud. But to say that they can just bang out a Javascript-based office suite because you guys think it would be fun is simply nuts. It's not like they have magic powers over there, no matter what the cafeteria serves.You would be right, except for the fact that people are already doing it [slashdot.org].If you don't believe it can be done, check out the actual applications. What many people don't seem to realize when they scoff at the idea of an AJAX based office quite is that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Konqueror, all have "design mode" APIs that allow a user and JavaScript to manipulate the web page directly. Combine that with some excellent import/export filters for HTMl to popular office formats, and you have a decent office suite framework already at your grasp.If you really don't think it can be done, look at those sample apps, and consider that they are done with basically no budget. Now throw the mihgt of Google, it's money, and it's developers at the problem. It is not beyond feasability that they could construct such a suite in a matter of months, especially when you consider that 80% of the functions in MS Office are only used by 20% of the peopleAlso consider how well this would integrate with their existing core competancies (indexing and searching). You could store all your documents online ina shareable Google store, and they woudl already all be indexed and searchable. You could use your Google addrfesss book to select other people who would be allwed to access and search the documents. And of course you would use Google Talk to collaberate on them. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:You are overestimating the effort (Score:4, Insightful) by Mantrid Drone (699799) on Sunday October 09, @01:24PM (#13751185) Creating something like a simple web-based word processor is certainly within the realm of possibility. Unfortunately, the implementation ends up being a Rube Goldberg machine of clunky technologies duct-taped together into a horribly convoluted, difficult to maintain, spaghetti-code mess. I'm very sorry, web fanboys, but HTTP, HTML and JavaScript were not designed to be a GUI application framework and every attempt to shoehorn those technologies into that role just underscores the idiocy of the approach. That is not to say that network-based, zero-install applications are a bad concept--it's just that there are much, much more elegant ways to solve that problem, and that we could be making a lot of meaningful progress in that area if so much time and effort wasn't being wasted creating a million stupid web-app frameworks. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:You are overestimating the effort by thrillseeker (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @01:35PMRe:You are overestimating the effort by Mantrid Drone (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @01:44PM Does it matter? No. (Score:4, Insightful) by brunes69 (86786) <slashdotNO@SPAMkeirstead.org> on Sunday October 09, @01:58PM (#13751323) (http://www.keirstead.org/) Creating something like a simple web-based word processor is certainly within the realm of possibility. Unfortunately, the implementation ends up being a Rube Goldberg machine of clunky technologies duct-taped together into a horribly convoluted, difficult to maintain, spaghetti-code mess. Unfortunately, you are thinking like a coder and not a businessman.If efficiency was the gold standard by which an application was judged, then we'd all be writing assembler all the time. If code readability was the gold standard, then we would all be writing every application in CobolBasic.All that matters, in reality, is a) Does this application look good, b) Does it do it's job well, and most importantly, c) Will people use it?The consumer does not give a flying f*** if the codebase of an application is reuseable, or if it is cobbeled together with toothpicks and jello, as long as it works and makes their life easier. A web-based office suite would fit that role nicely. It would *just work*, it would do the job it was designed to do. It may not have every bell and whistle, but guess what? The vast majority of people don't care about that.Not everyoule would use such an application, but Google would not need everyone to use it to be profitable. Hell, it would be so cheap to create and maintain, they could likely be profitable with a very small number of users in proportion to the number it takes Microsoft to turn a profit on MS Office. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Does it matter? No. by Mantrid Drone (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:27PMRe:Does it matter? No. by brunes69 (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @04:28PMRe:Does it matter? No. by Mantrid Drone (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @08:01PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:You are overestimating the effort by Otter (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @01:54PMRe:You are overestimating the effort by brunes69 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @02:04PMRe:You are overestimating the effort by helix_r (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @04:00PMRe:You are overestimating the effort by Darth Cow (Score:1)Monday October 10, @12:55AM Writely? (Score:5, Insightful) by peterprior (319967) on Sunday October 09, @12:36PM (#13750966) (http://nermal.org/) You could always use Writely [writely.com] :) [ Reply to ThisRe:Writely? by sabit666 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @01:22PMRe:Writely? by ramparte (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @04:15PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Writely? by bcrowell (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @01:54PMRe:Writely? by gatzke (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:54PM Well, they didn't say a flat NO! (Score:5, Insightful) by AnonymousYellowBelly (913452) on Sunday October 09, @12:36PM (#13750967) Steve Jobs said flash-based players were CRAP right until he unveiled Apple's flash-iPod. So Sergey can keep on shouting: "we ain't doing it!" all the way to hell, but if someone can develop a Web-based solution for working with documents, that is Google. And I do believe that there must be better ways of creating stuff than with de MS Office paradigm.So I say, not seeing is believing. [ Reply to ThisI agree. by game kid (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @12:48PMRe:Well, they didn't say a flat NO! by SiMac (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:33PM Not so difficult to see (Score:5, Insightful) by zappepcs (820751) on Sunday October 09, @12:48PM (#13751024) (http://www.asomaworld.net/zinn | Last Journal: Tuesday October 04, @08:28PM) When did Google announce anything before they had a beta you could play with?So, until Google & Sun work out what they want to do, and Google has played with it, there won't be an announcement... Announcing vaporware as the next savior of the universe is an MS kind of thing to do.I have faith in the team of Sun and Google to work out how to make the most of 'being against MS' and then execute the plan... [ Reply to This Of course the ex-Sun and Current Sun staff (Score:1) by TarrySingh (916400) on Sunday October 09, @12:50PM (#13751034) (http://tarrysingh.blogspot.com/) want sun products like StarOffice to make some money and partnering with an ailing giant is not really a way to *STAY* wonderkid's. No Backrubbing here.Or...Maybe they want to play sneaky and sneak out the Office on the Web.Or..The three (Goog, Sun and MS) want to merge together. [ Reply to This The article was a joke... (Score:5, Interesting) by MightyYar (622222) on Sunday October 09, @12:51PM (#13751038) ...making fun of people who speculate on Google's "next move".So let me give them fodder!Distributing OpenOffice wouldn't be useful. What would be useful, imho: A simple word processor meant for short-ish documents that would work with gmail such that I could email PDF versions of the documents. Perhaps instead of PDFs, simply a link to the document that is hosted by Google.A google wiki. Something that lets my whole group coordinate on making a knowledge base using simple, intuitive tools.A simple presentation tool, similar to the word processing tool.A photo editor, charting tool, and other basic peripheral applications. Now, the trick is to tie them all together such that I don't need to ever exit google.com. For instance, I might want to include a picture from the internet into my presentation. I should be able to, for instance, click on something like "insert photo from internet" and be able to use google images to find the right picture. I should never have to save things to and from my computer (though it would be nice to have that ability if necessary!). I think between Yahoo's new mail interface that demonstrates drag-and-drop, and the impressive Google mapping features, there is a demonstrated availability of the necessary technology to implement at least a basic office suite. [ Reply to This Its going to take more than Star Office (Score:3, Insightful) by olddotter (638430) on Sunday October 09, @12:56PM (#13751060) Star Office is great for those of us that know about it. But it will take more than star office (or open office) to remove MS-Office from the world. I think Google knows that. If Google is going to take on MS, it will be with something much smarter and more subtle than a direct head-on frontal assault. So no matter how cool we think that would be, expect something else. Google has been pretty good at "thinking different" so far, and I don't expect that to change. [ Reply to This A web based suite is idiotic (Score:5, Insightful) by sco08y (615665) on Sunday October 09, @12:59PM (#13751070) I'm pretty sure most companies have gotten over the urge to put everything on the web, but for reporters, a web app has to deal with certain limitations:1. The network.2. Flaky web standards.3. Living along side other plugins and browser extensions. (That means Other People's Threads in your process space.)4. No standard API for printing, the raison d'etre for an office suite.5. Browsers, by design, have virtually no integration with the rest of the OS. [ Reply to ThisRe:A web based suite is idiotic by dep01 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:02PMRe:A web based suite is idiotic by TX297 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @01:02PMRe:A web based suite is idiotic by bcmm (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @04:34PMRe:A web based suite is idiotic by bcmm (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @04:38PM Well, that's disappointing, but (Score:4, Interesting) by dep01 (730107) on Sunday October 09, @01:05PM (#13751096) (http://www.whatthehellisupwiththat.com/) Sure, that is a disappointing announcement. I was really looking forward to seeing what Google could do with an online Office app. However, they *ARE* up to something. They're having that secret "invite-only" press conference on, I think, October 26th. Perhaps that's to announce Google's "Calendar app [googlerumors.com]" though. Not sure. I'm waiting excitedly. I'm a big fan of Google (though Google Reader [google.com] has yet to grow on me at all). [ Reply to This The Unofficial Web Applications List (Score:5, Informative) by Sundroid (777083) on Sunday October 09, @01:06PM (#13751102) (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/) Whether Google plans to plunge into the web-based office suite or not, we don't know, but others have started to create web-based applications like Writely (wordprocessing), Num Sum (spreadsheet), and Writeboard, and most of them useAJAX technology. This site called "The Unofficial WebApplications List" [webapplist.com] lists dozens ofthem. [ Reply to ThisRe:The Unofficial Web Applications List by bcrowell (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @06:54PM Yes Office Suite Google! (Score:2) by otisg (92803) on Sunday October 09, @01:12PM (#13751130) (http://www.simpy.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 15, @01:58PM) This has to be taken with a grain (or few grains) of salt. Remember, this is the head of the same company that was once laughing at Web Portals and said they would stay focused on search. So, Yes Office Suite Google! It's just a matter of time and surprise. [ Reply to This Plenty of room for that! (Score:1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09, @01:13PM (#13751136) Fancy up there html email composer to do:1) Notes2) Basic Documents3) To Do Lists4) Calendar EntriesCreate a light csv viewer, manipulatorCreate a DB clientHave a way to organize any sort of document.Tab the interface with Google groups, Google Personal Search, Google Calendar, and Googles personal web page / blogger#@$%%@#, a lot of people wouldn't need much else. [ Reply to ThisRe:Plenty of room for that! by eonlabs (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @04:58PM Internet storage (Score:2) by tsa (15680) on Sunday October 09, @01:16PM (#13751154) (http://home.wanadoo.nl/r.w.tjerkstra) Google already is experimenting with an e-mail service with mailboxes of over 2 GB. I bet they are working hard on offering an omnipresent networkdrive, accessible via the Interweg, of course, in which people can store all the documents they need to get their jobs done. If they combine this with their Google toolbar they have one hell of a product to offer. [ Reply to This Google is the enemy? (Score:2) by jred (111898) on Sunday October 09, @01:30PM (#13751209) (http://www.cautioninc.com/) I guess Google is starting to be more like MS around here. Instead of saying "the giant search engine", it's now "the giant ad broker". [ Reply to This Why? (Score:2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09, @01:33PM (#13751218) Most recently I've been using Gmail for all of my text editing. With its machine independence, autosaving, and the best spell checker on earth, why would I bother with a thick client?I think this is the way to go. I agree with Sergey, Google is in a position to shatter our perceptions of how office work has to be done. We don't need Word and Outlook and Excel. We can do everything with thin clients, XML, and huge back-end databases. [ Reply to ThisServices not Suites by Observador (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @02:07PMRe:Why? by Jarlsberg (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @02:41PM You know (Score:2) by Zebra_X (13249) on Sunday October 09, @01:37PM (#13751237) That article doesn't make anysense, it's a bunch of quotes taken out of context. "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." Doesn't tell us anything. What documents is talking about?This big "announcement" is not. There is nothing on the sun site or even the press conference that really spells out what's going on. It was an opportunity for McNealy to get some good press next to google. In the press video, they had these stupid posters up listing each of the CEO's achievements over the last few years. Who cares? Especially when it comes to McNealy.Pretty lame if you ask me. [ Reply to This Maybe I'll just keep making weekend rants ... (Score:3, Interesting) by SuperDuG (134989) <be@NOsPam.eclec.tk> on Sunday October 09, @01:51PM (#13751282) (http://www.eclec.tk/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 25, @04:37PM) Here let me just go ahead and use a fake form ... What pissed me off about the article: Google co-founder Sergey Brin has quashed speculation that the giant ad broker is to introduce a web-based Office suite Why did it piss me off: Because Google is not a giant ad broker? Aight here's the deal, last week my issue was with google being the next MS-Killer ... so this post is essentially right along those lines.GOOGLE IS A COMPANY THAT DOES INTERNET APPLICATIONS MAINLY SEARCHING.They're biggest competition is Yahoo, not microsoft. Let's see ... what company started off mainly as a search engine, then became a portal, started offering services that other sites did (Like driving directions, email, instant messaging, newsgroups, etc)? It wasn't microsoft, it was Yahoo.People you've absolutely killing me here. First off people are google fan boys for no real apparent reason, like apple, they are a company whos main concern is to make money and as much of it as possible.Hence, they are no different from any other for-profit company out there. End of story, google is no less "the man" than microsoft is. They are a company traded on the stock market, they are in the business not to change the world, but to ... let's here it ... MAKE MONEY.Anyways, I hope that they keep the airconditioning on in your ivory tower...I'm just happy that I can turn off the google story topic when I don't want to see what ELSE is happening in the world. So I'm not really going to blame slashdot here... I think the only one to blame for all my hostility is me, for actually cruising the google stories during the weekends. [ Reply to ThisRe:Maybe I'll just keep making weekend rants ... by generic-man (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @02:40PM Why wait for Google? (Score:2, Informative) by philntc (735836) on Sunday October 09, @01:51PM (#13751286) When it's already done [thinkfree.com] ? [ Reply to ThisRe:Why wait for Google? by xornor (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @02:42PM Please Warn When Linking to The Register (Score:2)