Will Google Provide Presentation Options?

That piece of the puzzle, called Google Presently, has created some buzz among bloggers. A portion of code reviewed by Ionut Alex. Chitu at the Google Operating System blog revealed hints of the name and functions of the new service.

Chitu noted in a later comment on the blog post how the name Presently, Google’s label for the service, really does put it in like with names for its other productivity applications. Google purchased Writely for word processing; they developed a spreadsheet program to complement Writely, and its service name is Wise, so it’s probably safe to call it Wisely.

Discovering the Presently service happened the way things like penicillin and Silly Putty came into being – by accident, Chitu wrote in response to a question about the find:

Upon checking, there was the relevant section of code, containing the Presently name. The document he found was later edited to remove references to Presently, but not until after he and TechCrunch grabbed copies of the original.

Garett Rogers at Googling Google later summarized some of the points from the find:

We give Chitu credit for picking up on the Presently snippet; it’s a nice find. But we have to wonder if somewhere at Google there is a strategy to reveal information like Presently in a way that its avid base of fans will “discover” this way.

Why pay for a PR effort and sit through a bunch of interviews with the ravenous media when dropping some code into blogger laps accomplishes the same thing?

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

This is linked to the idea that the software is not a product, but a service. Who wants a service that becomes outdated in a few months? Companies should improve their services constantly and this means release new functionalities every few weeks.

Now, this gives a big competitive advantage to web applications.

• users do not have to download the new version to get the new functionality (it’s simply there, that’s the new lime green button)
• companies do not have to maintain backward compatibility (no one will never run an obsolete version)
• users are more involved in development, and can suggest new features to be added (you can really think to write to the writely dev team to suggest a feature. Would you ever write to MS Word dev team?)
• companies can try new features every day and choose how much to invest on each of them depending on the community feedback
• users can reach the service from anywhere
• companies can deliver a service available everywhere

What scares me is that the use of the term “Beta” seems to have misled some companies giving the impression that they can build buggy services, put a colorful Beta logo and think they are cool and “so web2.0″.

There’s a big difference between releasing a service built with components that are still in beta and releasing a service in which the architecture is still in beta.

The architecture of a service can be in Perpetual Beta, because users can provide important feedbacks and feature requests, and companies should add and remove tools and services depending on the feedback and their intrests. What can (and should) be in Perpetual Beta is the way small pieces links together, not the small pieces themselves.

Web 2.0 it’s like LEGO.

You have small, simple and colorful pieces, and you build platforms and services with this pieces. You can build something that changes every day, but the small pieces you use must be solid.

Small and solid pieces are what give web2.0 companies the capability of fast response and fitness for their niche. If these small pieces are released too early they won’t be solid enough to build valid services. If you are tempted to release an api or a feature that you feel is not solid, maybe you’ve just found something you can split into smaller pieces, and release each one separately.

Some companies are inclined to view the users as free debuggers, while they are far more than this: users are the ultimate resource to discover the best possible way to deliver a service, because only users can tell you how to link the LEGO pieces.

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Francesco is an Italian software engineer currently working on Java mobile applications. He is a passionate blogger, you can read his thoughts about SEO, technology and www social trends at www.mapelli.info or add his feed to your feedreader.

If anyone else suggested Google should get together with ThinkFree before this article I wrote in September 2005, I’d like to hear from them because that would be some mighty fine prognosticating and it deserves some attention.

The chatter has been heard in various corners and dark alleys of the Internet, that Google and its hoard of cash, equivalents, and marketable securities could be applied generously to ThinkFree, which has offices in Korea and the US.

ThinkFree would give Google what many have predicted – a viable and potent alternative to Microsoft Office that could give Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie a bad case of the Rice Krispie spewies over their breakfast tables.

That would supersede the work accomplished by Google’s Spreadsheet developers, as well as the integration duties engineers performed to make the Writely acquisition function nicely under the big G label.

A competitive company does recognize when a need exists to fold a weak hand, especially when there’s a chance to get a better one next round. Those who may see it as a Microsoft killer will miss the true benefit Google could gain, as another potential revenue stream.

Doing that will require Google to offer true support for ThinkFree, should it be acquired and repurposed for the SMB market. Support can be expensive for the provider, which is why so many companies, new and old, have been driving support initiatives to newsgroups and websites.

Google would have to find a happy medium there, to provide enough handholding to get clients up and running without creating an onerous expense that eats into earnings. They should be able to accomplish that.

There’s another reason why a Google acquisition, performed with plenty of fanfare and buzz, would benefit the search advertising giant. In Asia, South Korea is a very valuable market. Google’s first foreign-language blog was in Korean, so it’s obvious they respect the country’s tech-savvy userbase.

Bringing ThinkFree into the arms of the Googleplex could be a significant win in the hearts and minds of those users, provided they respect the ThinkFree brand and emphasize how important an acquisition will be to an already-dominant firm.

Google has only enjoyed a slim piece of the Korean search market. Investing in and publicizing a Korean technology asset to the world could help Google gain a stronger foothold than the one it has now, assuming they can better match the Google experience to Korean search expectations too.

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Google’s Online Office Suite Takes Shape

For now, it looks like Google has one part of the Microsoft development process copied: they have managed to come up with lengthy, boring names for products. When visiting Writely.com, the visitor reaches Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Not quite as exciting as Google Office, is it? In fairness it is too soon to call a two-function service an office suite, but perhaps for a lot of people having word processing and an effective spreadsheet creator on hand from wherever they may be (with an Internet connection), that would be enough.

Users of Writely who sign in to the new service with a Google Account will have the option to move documents saved under an old Writely login to that account. Once moved, they can’t be moved back. Considering that a Google Docs & Spreadsheets user may have other services in place with Google already, like Gmail, that probably does not present a problem.

I was able to move three old documents over without difficulty, and they remained intact. One irritating little issue is still present – a single space between paragraphs in Writely/Google Docs still becomes a double space when copying and pasting parts of a document into other applications, including Notepad.

Both the Docs and Spreadsheets retain the features that already existed. Those include collaboration features for multiple users to share and edit files created with either product. Users can upload several file formats to the word processor: Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text. They can be downloaded in several formats from the service, including PDF.

If Google truly has aspirations to challenge Microsoft, ZDNet’s Google blogger Garett Rogers thinks Google needs to make an investment in customer support:

Another trust issue could be document storage. Anything created in the newly combined product would be stored at Google. While Google does well in protecting information, they are not invulnerable to missing a bug here or there that could reveal a document.

A little prudent sensibility goes a long way in this case. The Washington Post probably won’t care in someone’s family reunion plans accidentally become revealed, but if the family happens to be named Bush or Cheney, reporters would take an interest.

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Microsoft Versus Google… Here We Go Again

Just as users of Google’s Writely online word processor were receiving emails that their logins were becoming Google accounts, Microsoft began to more openly talk about productivity software in the online arena.

Microsoft’s Alan Yates said in a Reuters report the company wants to find more ways of reaching potential customers:

When Microsoft first began to discuss online options like Office Live, it appeared the company had productivity software in mind for the online effort. Instead, Office Live arrived as an email and small website hosting service, with options for collaboration and other business features available.

But no Excel or Word, arguably two of the most widely used business applications in the world. They represent the foundation of Office, which delivers about a quarter of Microsoft’s $44 billion in revenues to the company. It isn’t difficult to see why the company would not be eager to put that online.

Placing Works in the Office Live offerings would be a compromise, one that could boost that products revenue by using an ad-supported model, while keeping Office a shrinkwrap product.

Google has taken a step towards making word processing, spreadsheets, calendars, and email all available from a single sign-on. Microsoft could do the same, but they will have to do it better to exceed the Google hype.

Where Google betters Microsoft, according to Techdirt, is in collaboration. The Writely product was built with that in mind.

Collaboration does not look like much of an obstacle to Microsoft. They already offer collaboration features in Office Live. Extending that to create a SharePoint-lite for documents and spreadsheets should be something the engineers in Redmond can accomplish.

That leaves it up to Google to make the next move, if the much-rumored “Google Office” challenger to Microsoft is truly taking form. An extended look at the company by the Chicago Tribune suggests this may be more difficult than some may think for Google to do:

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If you have a Google Account email address different from your Writely login, then login with your Google Account and then click one of the links to migrate your documents from your old account into your new account (or you can click this link). Your new account will take all the old documents away from the old account and replace your position in those documents.

A note, if your old Writely account is a different email address than your Google Account, you now have a Google Account in that address. Even after migrating, that Google Account exists. That can be kind of weird, so be aware.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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The Writely blog also says they will be moving to a Google Account sign-in in the future.

(via LifeHacker)

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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The news must have gotten lost in all of the excitement in Mountain View over attending the Star Trek convention in Vegas, which they were sure to issue a press release about yesterday – and blog about it.

Captain’s log: got so excited about Marissa Mayer in Spock ears, forgot to tell everybody about Writely.

Writely is one of those new Google-owned services that gets everybody tossing around phrases like “Microsoft-killer” and makes them rue the plight of the little guys, who’d been working on similar server-based applications.

Still in beta, the “Web word processor” requires visitors to sign up for an account before trying it out. The application allows users to share documents online, team edit from anywhere there’s an Internet connection, and store documents online.

Whether Microsoft likes it or not, users can upload Word documents, and OpenOffice documents in .doc, .odt, .rtf, or pdf, .sxw, and HTML, complete with tables, images, and fonts. And, as Anders Bylund puts it, it’s all “AJAXified,” showing third-party edits in nearly real-time and listing who’s messing with your magnum opus at the bottom of the screen.

For bloggers, Writely includes support for blogging formats like Blogger, MovableType, and MetaWeblog, and allows publishers to publish via RSS feeds through Bloglines.

All that, but, Bylund complains:

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An AP report noted the pending arrival of Google Spreadsheet, which will be a free alternative to Microsoft’s Excel program. As a web-based product, it would complement Google’s Writely online word processor acquisition to form another piece of a Google productivity suite.

Right now, Google offers an email service (Gmail), a calendar service (Google Calendar), and an index for storing information (Google Base). There isn’t a presentation software equivalent to PowerPoint yet, though Google Page Creator could host a HTML-based presentation in a pinch.

AP cited comments from Google Spreadsheet’s product manager, Jonathan Rochelle, on the upcoming release of the new service. He described the limited beta approach as one that gives the company time to sort out issues with the software, along with other details in the article:

Business 2.0 senior writer Om Malik speculated on his blog that Google acquired a company called iRows to provide the spreadsheet functionality. iRows was offline as of press time, which fueled more guessing as to its possible role in Google’s plans.

UPDATE!: Malik now writes that iRows is not part of Google, so that was a false alarm.

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Intranets, on the other hand, haven’t progressed an inch since, oh, say 2001. While the web has witnessed the wide-scale adoption of social networking and the early stages of true web-based applications (like Writely and AjaxWrite), the intranet of 2006 looks pretty much the same as it did five years ago.

I know because intranet audits are a staple of my consultancy. I see a lot of intranets, and have since…well, since before the word “intranet” was adopted. I’m working on three of these audits at this moment. And although there are plenty of fine features and functionality, there is little to suggest intranet teams are adopting the characteristics of the “read-write” web.

Sure, blogs and wikis are finding their way onto intranets, but the number of companies employing these social computing tools is a bare fraction of the total number of intranets functioning today. As for the other elements of Web 2.0, I’m aware of less than a handful of intranets that have embraced notions like social tagging (as exemplified by del.icio.us (although I have heard of two companies taking initial steps in this direction), audience ranking (along the lines of Digg and Memeorandum, social networks ( like LinkedIn, file sharing services like Flickr and YouTube or AJAXish tools like PageFlakes (which has become my default home page).

All of these utilities make perfect sense forintranets, and most of them would be simple to implement. Simple, in any case, compared to, say, getting an SAP portal up and running. Social tagging would let employees find intranet content based on bookmarks their colleagues have asigned. One cmpany, for instance, calls its mailroom “Document Delivery Services;” there is no reference to “mailroom” anywhere on the intranet. If one employee found the DDS site and tagged it “mailroom,” other employees would be able to find it by searching the bookmark site for the word that makes the most sense to them.

Digg-like ranking would let employees prioritize company news and information based on what is most important to them. (The company could continue to push news it believes is so important that every employee should see it.) Social networks that emulate the likes of LinkedIn would let employees in large organizations make contact with others who can help with a project or assignment through trusted intermediaries. And personzlied web start pages like PageFlakes and ProtoPage do exactly what web portals do (at a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time it takes companies to implement portals like the ones sold by Plumtree and Oracle.

Any of these kinds of services would make intranets infinitely more valuable, compelling, and usable for employees. So why aren’t intranet teams making the slightest move to keep up with developments on the web? There are several factors at play:

• IT departments have invested too much time and effort into developing the infrastructure of the current iteration of the intranet and are in no hurry to move in a different direction.
• Corporate IT staffs-some of them, anyway-are utterly clueless about what’s happening on the web. They don’t know online AJAX from the kitchen cleanser.
• Communicators figure the intranet is working just fine the way it is; why fix what isn’t broken?
• Corporate communicators-many of them-are utterly cluelessa bout what’s happening on the web. They wouldn’t know what Digg was even if they’d been dug.
• Too much of an investment has been made in the existing portals that haven’t produced the kind of results most companies hoped for
• The existing intranet hasn’t lived up to expectations in the first place; why invest time and effort in it now?

Most companies are struggling to retain a command-and-control structure for their intranets. Tools that put control into employees’ hands are antithetical to intranets where only authorized representatives of the company can contribute content.

There are, I’m sure, other obstacles standing in the way of intranet evolution. There are also, I’m sure, some intranets somewhere that have undertaken efforts to adopt some of these tools. I haven’t seen them; have you? Intranet teams should start taking a hard look at their stagnant intranets and how they can be improved-to the benefit of the organization through enhanced productivity-using the many elements that make up the read-write web.

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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.