June 5, 2007 at 12:46 Google bought an online competitor Word
The company Upstartle , working on the online word processor Writely was acquired by Google. Rumors that such a deal could take place in the near future have already circled the Internet, but now they are confirmed by a message on the Writely developers blog.
Upstartle employees are extremely pleased with this event, and report that the transition under the patronage of Google has already begun. In connection with it, the registration of new Writely users has been suspended. It is said that this is due to the fact that work has begun on integrating Writely into the Google services system.
Already registered users of Writely, however, may not worry so far and continue to work with a text editor as if nothing had happened. Details of the future Writely remain a mystery. The only question that the authors of the service were able to answer with confidence was whether the personal documents of users will remain in the same state as they were previously, and whether they will remain as private (apparently, this meant collecting statistics similar to what Google keeps according to the data from Gmail inboxes).
It is alleged that the data will remain one hundred percent private, and that Google’s policy here will not only not be an obstacle, but vice versa - it will guarantee the safety of documents. Vague answers are given to the remaining questions, which boils down to the fact that the creators of Writely themselves do not know any details. In particular, it is not known whether contextual advertising will be displayed on the pages of the editor, whether their appearance will change at all, and whether it will be necessary to register an account with Google in order to use the service.
Such a dynamic expansion of Google in the field of web services cannot but impress. The recent news that Google plans to provide network drives for storing personal data and rumors that an updated version of the calendar is being prepared at GMail further reinforce this impression.
Upstartle employees are extremely pleased with this event, and report that the transition under the patronage of Google has already begun. In connection with it, the registration of new Writely users has been suspended. It is said that this is due to the fact that work has begun on integrating Writely into the Google services system.
Already registered users of Writely, however, may not worry so far and continue to work with a text editor as if nothing had happened. Details of the future Writely remain a mystery. The only question that the authors of the service were able to answer with confidence was whether the personal documents of users will remain in the same state as they were previously, and whether they will remain as private (apparently, this meant collecting statistics similar to what Google keeps according to the data from Gmail inboxes).
It is alleged that the data will remain one hundred percent private, and that Google’s policy here will not only not be an obstacle, but vice versa - it will guarantee the safety of documents. Vague answers are given to the remaining questions, which boils down to the fact that the creators of Writely themselves do not know any details. In particular, it is not known whether contextual advertising will be displayed on the pages of the editor, whether their appearance will change at all, and whether it will be necessary to register an account with Google in order to use the service.
Such a dynamic expansion of Google in the field of web services cannot but impress. The recent news that Google plans to provide network drives for storing personal data and rumors that an updated version of the calendar is being prepared at GMail further reinforce this impression.