Online ajax-rich word processor Writely began accepting new accounts today after closing registration when the company was acquired by Google in March. A number of startups who used to compete with Writely will now have to challenge Google.

Writely’s acquisition fueled talk of a Google Office suite of services, a vision made more real by the subsequent launch of Google Spreadsheets and Google Calender. A Google Drive for online storage has long been rumored to be just around the corner and analysts at Gartner have predicted that a Google PowerPoint type service will be released some time this year. (Garnter references Thumbstacks, see also Zoho Show and our coverage of both.)

Writely is collaboration friendly, can import Word documents, save to PDF, OpenOffice, Rich Text Format and zip. The system autosaves your documents every 10 seconds and offers online storage. Google Accounts will soon be used for signing in. Writely works on Mozilla based browsers and IE only.

Writely got the best review in a recent CNet round-up that goes into detail on its features and compares it to Zoho Writer (our coverage), Think Free Online and Glide Write. Other tools in this class include Rallypoint and WriteBoard.

Now that Writely is publicly available in the Google suite, do these other vendors stand a chance? They certainly may, but yesterday’s surrender from calendar company Kiko – with a nod to Google Calendar – certainly makes you wonder.

So much for the rumor, the aquisition of Writely by Google has now been confirmed on both the Writely blog and by Google. Congratulations to the Writely team.

This signals two things: a confirmation of Google’s desire to hit Microsoft hard and attack their largest revenue product, and that they will do this at least partially through acquisition rather than building the office suite entirely in-house. When, if ever, will Microsoft respond with their own online versions of the Office products?

UPDATE: Russell Beattie has a very funny web page congratulating Writely. Check it out.

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.

Writely (profiled earlier) continues to lead the pack in online ajax word products.

Writely has had great features from day 1: import and export into Word format, embedded images, a wysiwyg editor, drag and drop functionality, sharing with others, and tagging of documents.

They are also rolling out new features regularly and annoucing them on the Writely blog. A few features that I’ve noticed recently:

• Save as PDF (see screen shot) – I tested this and it’s excellent
• Localized (foreign language) FAQs – supported languages include Slovenian, Chinese, Turkish and Vietnamese
• Find and replace
• Support for RTF (rich text format)

The ability to create PDFs directly from writely is a really useful tool that you cannot do with Word (unless you’ve separately purchased or have otherwise obtained the PDF software). Writely is no longer a toy – it is fast becoming a legitimate alternative to Word.

Here’s what I’d like to see next – a quick rollout of other office applications, starting with Excel and Power Point.

The rumor is that Writely is courting venture capital money now and is being very well received. Writely is also an obvious acquisition target – both for the product as well as the proven team.

I’m loving the ajax office solutions tonight. In addition to Jotspot Tracker, I’ve been playing around with Rallypoint, an online ajax word/wiki product.

Rallypoint joins Writely, JotSpot Live, Zoho Writer and others (I lump services like Writeboard and the yet-to-be-launched Chalk in this category as well – a wysiwyg wiki and a sharable online version of word are effectively synonyms).

Rallypoint has some great features, but is not as robust as Writely yet. The beta account is allowed only 2 MB of storage. And while they allow pasting from word (?), they do not have an import or export feature.. Rallypoint does have wonderful image and media uploading (with a built in player), and rich sharing/permission features.

For more information on Rallypoint, check out Brian Benzinger’s post on the product.

Company: Writely
Launched: August 2005
Location: California

Overview:

Imagine Word, but as an ajax browser application that was free. And allowed tagging of documents. And you could set reader permissions for each document you create and allow others to edit the document, or just read it. That’s what Writely is.

Brian Benzinger at Solution Watch pointed it out to me this evening during a long Google Talk chat. It is a very functional word processor with most of the bells and whistles you’d expect – a range of fonts and styles, embedded images (up to 2 megs each), spell checker, etc. It has a fantastic wysiwyg editor. It also has an option to upload and/or save in Word format.

So the Writely guys and gals built the core feature set with an ajax UI, and then they went a step further and added some cool web 2.0 stuff. In addition to naming a document, you can allow others to edit it, or allow them read-only status. Documents can also be tagged for easy searches later – a nice touch. Writely is also completely free during its beta stage.

In many ways, this is a wiki with a nice wysiwyg front end (I keep thinking of wikiwyg), plus the ability to set permissions.

However, it is also more than that

Writely is a highly specialized niche application built with ajax. Ajax allows this (and other applications) to act very much like desktop apps. Stuff like this must get Microsoft’s attention…How long will it be before a full suite of platform-independent ajax-enabled office applications becomes available? If all you need is a browser to open and edit these documents, the huge network effect enjoyed by Microsoft Office could simply vanish.

For more information on Writely, see their blog here and Shadows in Motion.