Congrats to Writely for using .NET to get acquired by Google

That's pretty impressive considering no one has even used their product yet or even seen how or what it does.

I'm starting to think these aquisitions have far less to do with technology than inbreeding of executives.

Smart companies don't care about the underlying technology. They care about the product and the team behind it.

but shouldn't they at least have a single member or user before they get aquired?

Or is that passé in today's expanding bubble v2.006 ?

Too bad they didn't have any other choice for Word support. Hooray for Microsoft for killing choice.

Open Office 2 supports word, some people may be working on an open source version of online document processing based on OO2 on linux. Who knows.

If that's released on sf.net, I bet writely will be SO bankable. very.

I would be curious to know how much google paid for Writely.

Chris: I have used Writely, and it's a pretty well-done service. So, they have more than one user.

Durr: huh? Google is actively supporting Open Office. Seems to me there's healthy choices available for the office/word processing customer to make.

Writely "used" .NET in the same sense that I use Puget Sound Energy to do my work every day. Should they get an honorable mention if I sell more product?

There's nothing inherent in .NET that helped them make this product nor enticed Google to buy them.

BlogReader: I didn't realize there was only one tool to choose from like there is with your power situation. In, fact, I've always heard the hype around the valley that you can only get acquired if you DON'T use Microsoft tools.

I'll nominate Blogbeat... it's all ASP.NET 2.0. No way I could have done it as efficiently -- both productivity and scalability -- with anything else.

This is good to hear. I was worried being .NET would be a knock on me in case someone came a callin'.

oh, I'm not in the Valley though. does that disqualify me? :(

"Writely “used” .NET in the same sense that I use Puget Sound Energy to do my work every day. Should they get an honorable mention if I sell more product?

There’s nothing inherent in .NET that helped them make this product nor enticed Google to buy them. "

And yet, if Writely had been done in AJAX, people's hearts would be all a-flutter.

"Durr: huh? Google is actively supporting Open Office. Seems to me there’s healthy choices available for the office/word processing customer to make."

Not online there isn't. If you want to use a wysiwyg to create a pdf or odt in a browser, you may run into some problems.
I know that a project was started last year to do this with an OO backend(but put off because a lack of time). There is no sf project for it yet, but there should be this year. Hopefully it will be more like phpbb, mediawiki or joomla cms where anybody can run it rather than an exclusive service.

Google tried to make flash video an exclusive service and now pretty much every site that has shell access is running it with the open source libs.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ming/
http://klaus.geekserver.net/ming-video/examples...

I'm not saying there shouldn't be exclusive services on the internet..... well, ok, I am saying that. The interweb is for everyone.

Jeff: it might help you with some M&A officers! :-)

I wonder what's their backend. MS SQL? That would be a coup.

Scobles its going to be this , which will be part of the google office suite :)-

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1...

I wonder how much these guys are going to make in the near future?

Christopher Hawkings;

"And yet, if Writely had been done in AJAX, people’s hearts would be all a-flutter."

Your statement makes no sense, you do realize that .NET is a more general platform that can use AJAX technologies just like a J2EE or a ligther weight app can right?

The do use "AJAX", btw. (gosh I really hate that term ...)

You seem to desperately looking to include some Microsoft reference in anything. This mention of dotNet seems pretty desperate. The point is they had a good product. If it was a technical discussion, then the mention of the technology used would be appropriate.

But here you are just announcing the acquisition of a company, and you HAD to include a MS reference which is what you did (however irrelevant that might be)

Am I the only person who looks at Google and sees a company adrift? They're buying up kilometers of dark fiber, they're building an internet OS, they're an advertising company, they're a content company, they want to catalog all the information in the world.

Just think what could be accomplished if they just decided what they wanted to be...

whats about this that nobody ever used writely?
They were open for signups.
I had my first document online 3 month ago...
They even had a poll asking if they are ready yet stepping out of beta...
And by the way, I really like Writely!

Forgive me if this is the wrong place for this, but since we're on the topic of .NET, I thought I'd mention the ImagineCup. Project Hoshimi, to put it concisely, rocks (although I have use to a relative's computer to participate). I'm not a big fan of .NET, but the Hoshimi SDK showcases some of its potential, and I like a lot of what I see in C#.

Please keep up the good work with ImagineCup and thespoke!

Last I checked, it didn't work in Safari.

Can't really get excited either way.

Zero Impact.

Yeah. I'm a writely user too. Tehy're not perfect,but they're as good as it gets w.r.t. online word processors. Bashing companies for it's own sake doesn't hold water with me.

"Your statement makes no sense, you do realize that .NET is a more general platform that can use AJAX technologies just like a J2EE or a ligther weight app can right?

The do use “AJAX”, btw. (gosh I really hate that term …)"

Come on now, don't be purposefully obtuse. You know full well that I'm talking about all these Web 2.0 apps that use AJAX or RoR or "social" something as their platform. You also know full well that those technologies are the current fashion darlings. You also know that if someone write one app in plain vanilla asp.net and one in all AJAX and Rail, even if they were identical in function the AJAX app would get all the press.

I hate the term, too, BTW.

Hype again. As suggested by Henry on Internet Insider, the acquisition is not really a news. Seems the acquisition has been done sometimes ago, but they decided to reveal this news at a right time. What is the right time I am implying? You name it. At the moment, I would say the time right after the settlement of click fraud is the right one. Forgive me I am thinking it in a way of conspiracy, but I do think it is and Google is a master of doing this kind of things. Putting it in the context, it's clear to say that they expected the hyped vision of Google Office will offset some anxieties of shareholders.
Mind me again, one thing I didn't get is Why everybody tries to compare Writely with Word? Calling Writely as a competitor of Microsoft Word is like calling Notepad as an IDE. If someone really wants to compare, Wordpad, and any other program which is using RichEdit control, would be a good candidate.
Happy moaning and cheering!

BTW, One of WriteLy.Com developers is in Top10 on TopCoder.com.

snewman - http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile...

So - It's has nothing to do with .NET - but team behind it.

I just feel sad that this overshadowed the real word processing news today: The Office 12 team presenting their new visual design at CeBit.

They built it in .NET

from the google blog announcement: ...not accepting new registrations until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture

Could that mean, until we've ditched .NET?

I really don't care what kind of technology they use, so long as the product is good. I think Google thinks the same way.

But Google will probably port it to run on Mono, as they have done with another .Net-based technology they have bought previously.

BTW 2:
"Jeff Turner": Just because your choice was using .Net, doesn't mean that its the one true choice for everyone. It all depends on what you are more comfortable with. Some are most comfortable with .Net, others Java, PHP, Python or Ruby.

Brian --> Am I the only person who looks at Google and sees a company adrift?

Yes. They are acquiring software companies, software that can be made free, and supported by ads. It will also stem Microsoft's revenue.

For ads to generate money, you need eyes to look at them. You get eyes (users) by offering them commonly used software for free.

Pretty simple, really.

the competition is on .
the customers will benefit from this action.

Brian (how ironic) - you thinking google is adrift says more about you than about google.

Google has a good idea of where its going. I think I have an idea (prolly wrong ;) and indeed their acquiring writely makes sense. But if I'm correct, they won't be interested in buying an excel or powerpoint clone, or indeed any of the AJAX/Flash based desktops like goowy/fold/pageflakes/etc.

Indeed, acquiring writely has little to do with competing against Microsoft - Writely is to Word as Wordpad is to Visual Studio, aka, completely different planets.

Gmail just got a better wordprocessor to use. Isn't that about it?

I checked out Writely before the purchase, and it is a great application.
Who cares it is written in .NET ?

I love Google's products BTW.

I bet it's Meebo. There's a lot of advertising dollars to be made with a multiplatform instant messaging system. Especially one that is so easily accessible.

I'm pleased to see Writely flipping. Great product, great productivity enhancer. Didn't know it was .NET - now that's making me think.

you do realize that google will NO WAY put extra microsoft webservers or databases in their grid to accommodate this? this'll all run on mono's ASP implementation

Christopher Hawkins: You obviously have no idea what AJAX is. It stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML. It is a client-side technology that can be used in most modern browsers. It has absolutely nothing to do with what backend server software is being used. AJAX applications can be produced by any decent server-side software whether it is from Microsoft, Sun, Apache, Rails, etc.

I actually do care what technology things are built on. It's plain from using Writely that it suffers from its .net underpinnings (too many pop ups, no safari support, click delays, general sluggishness, etc.).

But we souldn't forget that Orkut is .net so there is precedence for it in the 'plex.

It's cool that they used .NET to write it, but the post on the Writely blog says they will move to Google's software architecture, which probably means bye bye .NET.

Blogreader -

"Writely “used” .NET in the same sense that I use Puget Sound Energy to do my work every day. Should they get an honorable mention if I sell more product?"

That's ridiculous. People have a choice what platforms they develop on. Platforms are inherently different, and have different benefits.

You have no choice where you buy your electrons from and, even if you did, all electrons are identical (let's not get into a discussion of electron spinif you don't know what a development platform is, I doubt you know much about quantum physics either--just a guess).

It's very cool that an application developed with Microsoft's technology just got purchased by Google.

But it certainly brings up some interesting dilemmas. As in: how is Google going to integrate it with anything they've done? How are they going to host it? Will they port it to run on the Googleplex? Will they branch out into .NET hosting as well?

These are the interesting questions.

Innocent Bystander: Regarding the Safari support, I am quite sure it's because Safari does not (properly) support rich text editing and dynamic script loading. More here: http://www.fckeditor.net/safari.html

Brian (how's that ironic?), I've worked for clients who couldn't settle on a single brand identity (one day they were a computer direct-seller, the next day they were a retail storefront, the next day they were an ISP) and the result was internal confusion and a dissipated identity in the marketplace.

Right now Google is a famous search company with a single source of income. Any disturbance to their ad revenue and all the other ventures they're testing (perpetual betas..) may not come to much.

But what do I know?

"Christopher Hawkins: You obviously have no idea what AJAX is. It stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML. It is a client-side technology that can be used in most modern browsers. It has absolutely nothing to do with what backend server software is being used. AJAX applications can be produced by any decent server-side software whether it is from Microsoft, Sun, Apache, Rails, etc. "

MTG: You obviously are being obtuse on purpose. Of course I know what AJAX is. You know very well what I was getting at when I said that AJAXY, non-Microsoft apps get all the love these days. For some reason, rather than address my actual argument, you prefer to attack me. That's fine with me, if anything you're solidifying my point by doing so.

Suffice to say that I'm pleased and surprised to see something built on .NET get acquired in the current anti-MS, technology-as-fashion environment we seem to be in.

To the people who say Writely had no users: on Oct 23 last year they had about 34000, a little over two weeks later on Nov 8 they had about 50000 so just imagine where they'd be now 4 months later (those are the only actual numbers I have).

My source is comments by one of the Upstartle (company that made Writely) employees at http://forums.topcoder.com/?module=Thread&t...

One of his comments that's of particular interest: "They love to pick up on the "look out, Microsoft!" theme, for instance. But really we're complementary to Word, not competing with it."

Well.. if .NET is that cool, why is Hotmail using PHP ha?

Another question someone asked that I forgot to answer in my last post is answered on that page too. They're not using SQL Server or any other big enterprise (expensive) database.

"Well.. if .NET is that cool, why is Hotmail using PHP ha?"

Hotmail wasn't originally made by Microsoft. They bought it from someone who had made it in PHP, and modified it a little but weren't going to completely rewrite it. (And of course .NET wasn't out when Hotmail was invented). And you may have noticed that Hotmail is now being/will soon be replaced by Windows Live Mail, which uses - you guessed it - ASP.NET.

Something else about Google (humor me, I had a hard week): has there ever been a company that grew so rich so fast at the behest of competitors? IOW, Google reaches 90% of its customers via a competitor's platform (Windows) utilizing a (potential competitor's) backbone (the telcos). Maybe that's why they are buying up dark fiber and office applications?

So Google's going to be the next Microsoft/AT&T?

Okay.

"Hotmail wasn’t originally made by Microsoft. They bought it from someone who had made it in PHP"

Ohh yes I forgot... probably because that happened.. 8 years ago? When PHP was about the second or third release?

Time enought to translate to any language don't you think? ;)

Let's get real, .NET is not an awesome framework to make any difference with the rest.

"“Hotmail wasn’t originally made by Microsoft. They bought it from someone who had made it in PHP”

Ohh yes I forgot… probably because that happened.. 8 years ago? When PHP was about the second or third release?"

Look up php and mail, or better yet phpmail on google today, I think you'll find some interesting results. Programs have gotten alot better than hotmail.

@ Christopher Hawkins:

"You know very well what I was getting at when I said that AJAXY, non-Microsoft apps get all the love these days."

Writely is a) AJAXy and b) non-Microsoft. What other invalid distinctions are you going to come up with to cover for your lack of knowledge about what AJAX is?

Hell, MICROSOFT themselves have released an AJAX toolkit as part of ASP.NET - Atlas. http://www.asp.net/default.aspx?tabindex=9&...

Ironic that .net helped them build it. In the end, writely could undermine Microsoft Word. It's getting pretty good, and improving all the time.

I work from home - and my business partner is in another part of London - so when we are working on something together we co-operate on writely. It's a bit like logging onto a blog post.

"Writely is a) AJAXy and b) non-Microsoft. "

It was built with .NET, which - last time I checked - was indeed a Microsoft product.

Keep trying, though.

"Writely is a) AJAXy and b) non-Microsoft. "

It was built with .NET, which - last time I checked - was indeed a Microsoft technology.

Keep trying, though.

Google's Orkut is implemented in .NET. At least all the pages end in ".aspx".

Dan - Just a guess, you don't know much about quantum physics either. Seeing "What the Bleep do we Know?" twice does not count.

While you are at it, why not congratulate Onfolio for being picked up by Microsoft. I saw the app mentioned by Scoble and have used it ever since.

Ouch.. that *has* too hurt. Writely used .NET to build a product which they will sell to Google which they'll use to take on Office (one of Microsofts major cash cows). Talk about insult to injury :-P

Kevin

Google’s Orkut is implemented in .NET.

The orkut they had to take down because of security concerns?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/27/securit...

Another question someone asked that I forgot to answer in my last post is answered on that page too. They’re not using SQL Server or any other big enterprise (expensive) database.

That's the beauty of .NET! You can connect to ANY ODBC or OleDb data source. My blog engine used to be WordPress which had a mySQL database. I created my own blog engine in ASP.NET 2.0 (C#) and used a Microsoft Access database until I port to SQL server. Well, with .NET I was able to read the posts from my mySQL database. Just recently I created a function in C# to loop through the mySQL database and rewrite everything to my Access database.

I love .NET because it has a one-to-many relationship with existing technologies. This isn't the case with PHP I am afraid.

Message 75:

It's "MySQL" not "mySQL", genius.

This isn’t the case with PHP I am afraid.

Really? You googled for a php connector to an MS Access database and didn't find any results?

Rory -

I certainly don't claim to be a quantum physics expert. I took enough physics at Berkeley to realize that I am definitely *not* a physicist.

I do know that electrons were thought to be indistinguishable until spin was discovered.

And my point wasn't what an expert I am; it's that "Blogreader" had made a bogus comparison (Post 9) implying that using different development platforms was akin to using different power companies. It's a false analogy.

#75 - really? I coulda sworn there are _native_ drivers in PHP for Oracle, DB2, Postgres, MySQL, Informix, and a host of other databases (and, of course, ODBC)?

As an aside, there are plenty of examples of folks dropping .NET for LAMP, including (recently) one of the hot startups YouSendIt: beta.yousendit.com is now LAMP-based.

Reminds me of the whole Fellowship Church affair from last year that Robert wrote about.

Has anybody done a analysis of web 2.0 apps to see what platforms are being employed across the universe.

That would be interesting to see!

#81 - yes, I checked out Article Dashboard's "Top 10 Web 2.0 applications". Seven were PHP-based, one appeared to be Perl, and two were .NET.

Our printed greeting card store is based on wholly on Microsoft technology. By far, the main advantage is Visual Studio. There's no comparable development environment. We're now in the process of porting to ASP.NET 2.0 and we're looking forward to using ATLAS to add AJAX like features. Have a look! www.artamata.com

Hello! Help solve the problem.
Very often try to enter the forum, but says that the password is not correct.
Regrettably use of remembering. Give like to be?
Thank you!

i dont understand why so many ppl are into google.
they are a bad corporation who fired my freind for being on the computer to long...what the heck? its a computer company for god sakes!!! its just another pushy entrepenuer that too many ppl invest in. remeber the old days when there were no computers?