Google to Acquire Writely?
by Michael Arrington on March 8, 2006

Om Malik thinks Silicon Valley based Writely, an online Ajax word processor, and Google may be getting cozy. Unlike me, Om tends to really dig before posting on acquisition rumors, so this one may be for real. I’ve also been hearing endless stories of the imminent acquisiton of Writely – given the difficult business model that Writely will be forced into if they stay independent (premium fees and/or ads), the plethora of eager buyers, and the obvious synergies between Writely and Google Drive, this deal just makes too much sense not to be real. More on Writely here (just scroll down). My favorite Writely feature: save a document to PDF.

CrunchBase Information
Writely
Information provided by CrunchBase
Next Post
Previous Post
Advertisement
  • Actively Discussed Posts

Comments rss icon

  • Saul Weiner - March 8th, 2006 at 10:16 pm PST

    I wonder how Google will use their technology if they buy writely? For gmail? Throughout their system? As part of an office suite?

    reply
  • Amit Agarwal - March 8th, 2006 at 10:27 pm PST

    …My favorite Writely feature: save a document to PDF…

    And Microsoft just added “Save as PDF” to Microsoft Office 2007 software.

    So we know where Google is headed to.

    Amit.

    reply
  • Melvin Ram - March 8th, 2006 at 11:10 pm PST

    I wonder what they gain by acquiring Writely… over enhancing their exisitng technology, either than speed of development of course.

    Document management technology has already been developed for Gmail… so has document formatting. Saving files as PDF and other formats can’t be something that would take too much time to develop, test and deploy. I have not been a developer for some years now so this guess maybe way off:

    Maybe it has to do with the scalable nature of Writely’s architecture? What do you all think?

    reply
  • Curious - March 8th, 2006 at 11:17 pm PST

    Someone explain how 90% of Writely takes more than 2 weekends to code?

    This is an iframe with designMode=”on” and like 3 more features.

    Does anyone actually think this is a legit MS word replacement?

    reply
  • Brad - March 9th, 2006 at 12:08 am PST

    Melvin: “Maybe it has to do with the scalable nature of Writely’s architecture?”

    Good one. Writely might teach the creators of Gmail something about scalable architecture?!

    I rather think you are right that Gmail (and Blogger!) already do most of what Writely technology does. If Google wants a doc editor, why wouldn’t they just extend their Gmail code? Export to .doc and .pdf, and doc sharing, would be nominal challenges for freaking Google. I suspect such an acquisition would be more about Google keeping competitors away from Writely than anything else.

    reply
  • QualityWriter - March 9th, 2006 at 6:29 am PST

    “Someone explain how 90% of Writely takes more than 2 weekends to code?” -Curious

    I cannot agree more. Would google just buyout something which it already has. GMail mail editor/Blogger editor looks simple and handy to me.

    I feel stupid if Google would buy out Writely just becoz of “Export/Save functionality”, then why not the other bunch like ZohoWriter, RalleyHQ….etc.

    But, consolidation is one way where the web2.0 is heading. Soon, big are the bigger while the small becomes smaller.

    Millions for something which Google can develop within months, keeps me guessing always!!!!!!!!

    reply
  • Derrick - March 9th, 2006 at 6:38 am PST

    Actually, please give me an alternative to PDF. It fills an important need, but if there is one application that crashes more than firefox, it’s acrobat.

    reply
  • Mortimer - March 9th, 2006 at 7:04 am PST

    This is more than likely another Human Resources acquisition by Google. Nobody gets rich, but the engineers have an option to earn a million bucks or so if they join the Borg and are productive.
    The business model for most Web 2.oh companies seems to be “this is really cool — maybe Google will buy us!” Startlingly reminiscent of the Web 1.0 companies.

    reply
  • Tim - March 9th, 2006 at 7:37 am PST

    This would be another step towards epic 2015

    reply
  • Jason Fried - March 9th, 2006 at 7:50 am PST

    “Someone explain how 90% of Writely takes more than 2 weekends to code?”

    Then get on it if it’s that easy.

    reply
  • Sid Steward - March 9th, 2006 at 8:11 am PST

    Product-wise, I think it would make more sense for Google to create toolbars for Word, WordPerfect and Open/StarOffice (etc.). Just like their browser toolbars. Give them features specific to the kind of research writers perform.

    If you esp. like online editors with good PDF formatting, check out goffice.com. I have talked to them, and their first step was to build in good PDF layout and templates.

    reply
  • Bradley Twohig - March 9th, 2006 at 10:24 am PST

    Hurray luck number #27 in the quick flip business has been acquired. Who says a feature can’t be a lucritive code writing exercise…um I mean business.

    reply
  • Yoav Shapira - March 9th, 2006 at 1:04 pm PST

    Great move: online collaboration on documents, storage in the GDrive, collaborate with your GMail contacts… It makes good sense.
    http://yoavs.bl...ove-google.html

    reply
  • BlogReader - March 9th, 2006 at 1:04 pm PST

    Curious: Someone explain how 90% of Writely takes more than 2 weekends to code?

    Odd, I haven’t seen the Curious AJAX Word Writer out as it would only take 2 weekends to do.

    That’s the “I coulda” mentality. Well you haven’t so zip it.

    reply
  • Curious - March 9th, 2006 at 2:02 pm PST

    #12/#20 – Uh.. ok.. Take one of:

    http://www.htmlarea.com/
    http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/

    And host it. Then add 3 features. Call it: CURIOUS AJAX WORD UNIVERSAL EDITION 64-BIT 2.0.

    The designMode=”on” is the hard part, which was implemented by the Firefox / IE teams.

    Anyway, why are you all saying “so do it then!”? Can’t we have a discussion about the difficulty of implementing Writely or the innate browser binding or the reasons Google bought it without assuming that I’m some sobbing web 2.0 lacky who wishes I had done it first?

    I won’t “do it then” because my whole point was that it was an inane implementation that I’m not sure I’d consider a viable platform for a business. Why would I want to waste my time making a company out of a browser feature?

    reply
  • garyedwards - March 9th, 2006 at 2:59 pm PST

    There are any number of reasons why this day is important. For me, i’ve been waiting for this to happen, but not because i think that somehow Writely is going to replace MS Word. I think Writely/OpenOffice.org/Mozilla will replace MS Office, but only in the hands of Google. And now it’s happening.

    While this looks like a simple acquisition of some clever, but not all that difficult for a Google to build, Web 2.0 software, i would argue that it is moment for the world at large to mark, and Redmond to mourn. It’s the moment that OpenDocument arrives as an Internet ready XML language able to unify the many branches of information seeking structure. Information seeking the highly tuned resonance that a single baseline language can provide. I’ll try to explain.

    Writely is the first Wiki – Blogware site to interactive roundtripping with the OpenDocument universal file format. Because ODF is such a highly structured version of XML, and is currently in the process of making a metadata leap to RDF, the ability to search, aggregate, re use, and re purpose volumes of information can be greatly accelerated. What a wonder it is that Wiki and Blog information can now be natively available to this next generation of collaborative computing and information organization.

    There is no doubt in my mind that the ODF universal metadata model now under consideration by the OASIS ODF TC will have an incredible impact on Google. Indeed, i think the ODF UM will serve to deliver to Google Microsoft on a silver platter. This will be the result of a number of factors coming together, all of which play to the strength of Google’s vast exploitation of the collision they engineered between Moore’s Law and Metcalf’s Law. Google has the computational power and the network reach to benefit the most from the global movement to highly structured information. What this purchase of Writely does is greatly accelerate that global movement.

    I think that Writely also gives Google a point of convergence with the work they are currently doing in OpenOffice.org. The original Web was limited by a simplistic model for the interchange of documents. ODF is a universal format for the interchange of data; a process that itself lies at the heart of an interactive, highly collaborative Web 2.0. With the cross platform OpenOffice.org / Mozilla combination, every desktop can now have the cost of a free download an Internet ready XML productivity environment. The acquisition of Writely provides Google with a Web layer of that local XML environment.

    The key is that the information interchange is that it’s fluid, inter operable, easily transformed, and scalable across the many domains of implementation where ODF, as a single XML language, has impact. Among those domains are the desktop productivity environments, content and publishing management systems, Service Oriented Architectures, and, last but no t least, the Open Internet itself (thanks in no small part to the surge of interest in ODF AJAX engines like Writely).

    Another aspect of this deal that intrigues me is that it provides Google with another gateway into enterprises and large organizations (like the Commonwealth of Massachusetts). Anyone with half a brain is looking at SOA as the mos efficient means of leveraging the value of legacy information systems far into the future. XML is the life’s blood of SOA, and this leap into ODF will put them squarely into the SOA mix, right where the desktop environment meshes with Web based collaboration systems.

    My wife is a Realtor who uses Writely to “collaborate” with clients, other agents, and property professionals also playing a part in the typical real estate transaction; (mortgage officers, loan processors, title reps, inspectors, appraisers, lawyers, insurance carriers, brokers, etc.) The “Purchase and Sales Agreement” is of course one of the more important documents in the real estate transaction process, and it demands collaboration.

    Typically my wife would write such a document in ODF, using the XForms binding model to wire in database and spreadsheet fields such as listing price, offer amount, address, etc. Then she uploads the ODF to Writely, invites others to join her, and they proceed to hammer out the details in record time. And do so with everyone, including her clients, satisfied with their level of participation. Saves time. Saves money. Saves the hassles of scheduling a convenient meeting time. And everyone lands in this collaborative process with their information processing systems (their computers and information resources) cooking full speed.

    This interchange between an XML ready OpenOffice.org anchored desktop productivity environment, the Writely Web collaboration end, and the real estate transaction process participants is light years beyond the current fax/eMail/virus attachments dominated process. Throw in gMail, gCalendar, and gDrive, and what you have is a credible initiative certain to change forever the way real estate is transacted and home equity managed. Homeownership simplified, the Google way.

    One thing gWritely might want to watch carefully is how ODF manages the transition to the Semantic Web; especially concerning Ontologies and Topic Maps. That transition is underway now with the recent establishment of the OASIS ODF Metadata SubC to finalize work that has gone on for over two years towards crafting a proposal. Currently Writely allows for user defined “tags”. The ODF metadata model will enable tags and conceptual relationships based on defined ontologies and business process vocabularies. This will in turn greatly impact the Google search routine.

    Today Google search is a black art based on clever algorithms designed to discover structure and meta information where none exists. By throwing massive computational power against the unstructured volumes of human information, organizing the Web by document, and making that organization available to any and all, Google made their Web bones.

    With ODF a new layer is added to the Google arsenal; highly structured information based on the interchange of data within the traditional document model. Today a Google search returns links to unstructured documents. With information workers, nibblers, bloggers, messengers, eMailitists, and wikiites able to natively work in a structured XML format, the power of a Google search will be unleashed in ways most people have never considered possible. Instead of searching for documents, Google will be able to work against volumes of XHTML and ODF to return lists of “concepts”. The actual ideas, concepts and data within document containers that we seek. In other words, why waste time hunting down thousands of links when, with structured ODF information, Google could bring back the exact information as it is represented by paragraphs, bullets, headings, pictures, graphs, charts, or however else the creators, information workers, and active ontology engines decided to tag their most important ideas?

    This is a big day for Writely. And an even bigger day for Google and ODF.

    ~ge~

    gary.edwards@OpenDocument.us
    The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc.

    reply
  • RBA - March 9th, 2006 at 4:00 pm PST

    Google should’ve been able to come up with a product much better than Writely, by using one finger from its left hand, and beat anyone else in the game. I’m happy for the Writely team but unimpressed by Google.

    reply
  • Sid Steward - March 10th, 2006 at 9:05 am PST

    “Google should’ve been able to come up with a product much better than Writely …”

    Consider, however, if Google /had/ rolled out a Writely-killer then the community would have turned against Google. The ‘evil’ flag would wave and people would compare them to MS. As it is, they now bask in the community’s goodwill.

    reply
  • aftrpyknmu - May 21st, 2006 at 8:01 am PDT

    ycnhgnyawm sqqaxls qqcxmyd

    reply
  • Steven - July 28th, 2006 at 2:15 am PDT

    I think Writely do support PDF export, maybe also support docbook.
    google’s calendar supports PDF export.

    reply
  • parvee - September 25th, 2006 at 12:50 am PDT

    I think one can use lot of open source tools available on sourceforge.Pdf Convertor is an powerful open source tool used to convert into PDF’S

    reply
  • Blog Reviews - December 30th, 2006 at 3:27 am PST

    The latest rumour on the block is that Google might also be interested in acquiring Alexa and having the ultimate search engine and traffic monitoring. Could just be a viscious rumour, but what I’d give to be an Alexa shareholder if it does happen!

    Sam
    http://soapboxj...ry.blogspot.com

    reply
  • Karaoke Kev - January 3rd, 2007 at 8:12 am PST

    Is this the technology that Google’s new online word-processor and spread sheet package is based on then? These are 2 good products.

    Karaoke Kev
    http://youtubek...ke.blogspot.com

    reply
  • Tresor alarmanlage aus Berlin mitte Lichtenberg Schlüssel Notdienst und Sicherheitstechnik - January 23rd, 2007 at 3:44 pm PST

    I love their products! Just too great to work together.
    Its handy, that it’s under the roof of google all together now.

    reply

Leave Comment

Commenting Options

Enter your personal information to the left, or sign in with your Facebook account by clicking the button below.

Alternatively, you can create an avatar that will appear whenever you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog.

Trackback URL
Short URL
  • Actively Discussed Posts
bugbugbugbug
Techcrunch on Facebook