The Mad Dash For Online Word Processors
from the here-they-come dept
It was inevitable in the wake of Google buying Writely, but it seems that plenty of other web-based word processor clones are now trying to get some attention in the hopes of being bought by someone else. One slightly different story, however, comes from Michael Robertson, who has now launched AjaxWrite -- which seems right up his alley. People have incredibly strong opinions about Robertson as a person -- but he certainly knows how to pick his enemies. Almost every business he starts (and he starts a lot) is basically designed to target a big name competitor, and basically undercut that competitor's market by a huge margin -- often in disruptive ways. He's launched businesses that fit this description over and over and over again. Still, the "ajax" word processor market is already pretty crowded already (though, at mixed quality levels) and it's still not entirely clear what it takes to get people to use such tools. Writely, for all its funky features, mainly seemed to catch on because it added a collaborative piece, allowing multiple people to all edit a document remotely. As a collaboration tool, that's quite handy. Robertson's AjaxWrite, on the other hand, just seems focused on offering up a quick and dirty, web-based, word processor. It certainly could be useful in a pinch for those who need to work with Word documents, and don't have Microsoft Office (and don't want to download and install Open Office), but beyond that it's not clear if there's a real market for this offering. The thing is, Robertson may not care that much. Lately, he seems to be starting new businesses at an increasingly rapid pace -- and it's not clear if he cares how strong any of them are as a business. He seems to just enjoy causing trouble. Amusingly, though, AjaxWrite could be disruptive to another of his own projects that he launched just a few months ago -- trying to sell boxed versions of open source applications, like OpenOffice. It's nice to see Robertson having fun, but it seems like an online word processing clone these days needs to do more than just mimic an old version of Word.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Mad dash to be first to post
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Mad dash to be first to post
Mine came with wordpad!
ahhh hahahahahahahahahahahaha
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Mad dash to be first to post
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Mad dash to be first to post
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Mad dash to be first to post
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Mad dash to be first to post
Then I wonder why on many Linux distro's I need more then one disk to hold the installation. Granted it comes with a lot of extra's that aren't installed automatically.
But never the less, I once decided to test that argument and installed XP on a clean machine, straight though the install (that is no changing of the options), and found it took up about 1.5 GB of harddrive space. Mac OS 10.3 takes roughly 3 GB.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Mad dash to be first to post
That there's some bloatware in Linux distros is indisputable, but it actually asks you to pick what you want to install during the install process. Microsoft could take a page from that book and actually *ask* the user if he/she wants to install that silly pinball game that nobody ever spends more than 15 minutes playing...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Mad dash to be first to post
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Most Analysts Are Overestimating the Size of Googl
I am sick and tired of hearing analysts make wild projections about Google's growth prospects based on wild projections about the size of Google's total addressable market.
Continued ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bubble for Web 2.0
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More Info
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Another thing...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I was working on one just for fun
I was developing a web-based word processor just for kicks. Check it out: Ghost Notebook
Kinda stopped working on it because of a lack of feedback. Criticism constructive or otherwise is appreciated.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
on wordpad and OOo
second, there are only 3 reasons to not use open office when you cant get a hold of M$ office -
1) you are on a corporate network that is locked down, but then chances are you have access to M$ office anyway
2) you are stuck on a dial up connection and you only need a half hour to type whatever
3) you are just downright fucking lazy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
An interesting novelty, but it's clunky as hell
What's the benefit of a network-delivered word processor anyway?
That it's free? There are plenty of good free word processors.
That it's AJAX? That just makes it slow and buggy compared to a compiled app.
That it's delivered dynamically? That makes it load really slowly.
That in the future, all our stuff will live in "the cloud"? Do people really want the stuff that they word process to be out on the Internet somewhere?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And that's just a matter of not losing the document -- you'd have to be worse than an idiot to trust an online company to keep the contents of your documents secret. Google (for one) publicly stated that it would datamine its Gmail accounts for ad direction (and perhaps for juicy extortion material as well, for all I know). Further, Google has recently been approached by the government to turn over email (deleted and otherwise). Online document security is a joke, and if you use an online word processor, the joke is on you.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Say what?
I'm not familiar with OpenOffice, but maybe you can suggest which one has superior grammar and phrase checking?? I get the impression that you use neither of them...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
editors
Yes is did. With my bloated expensive proprietary OS which I, as a matter of fact, PIRATED!! Hells yeah!! Free software ftw!! I also bootlegged a copy of office!! Kick ass!!
Ultra edit is the best and I didnt pay for that either.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
vi
;)
just kidding. ive used word, notepad, wordpad, vi, xemacs, pico, etc ... it's a matter of what you get used to and what you need it for.
but the idea of an online is not appealing to me either. security and reliablity would be my concerns also.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: vi
still, with a gui program, id like it to not suck, so ill stick with ooffice.org
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
another clone indeed
Now for a rant. I just love it when everyone talks Web 2.0. come on, its just a word to describe possibly next generation development. My guess, ppl will lose interest until the next big thing and there are tons of clones out there. No one will feel special in about 2 years.
Also tired of ppl complaining about MS vs Linux and IE vs FF. Use what you want is what I always say. Find what suits you and get over it.
Just my two pennies worth...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Web version with limitations
Another good idea that will be wiped out by a view that only one web browser should be used.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Since when is an RTE an innovation?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
2 Compalints
2. For ajaxwrite i found that it uses XUL for user interface, XUL is not avaliable for Internet Explorer, Opera, etc. so the big problem is how will the programmer of ajaxwrite will port a technology that was made for Linux?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Word Processors
I don't like MS prices either, but I've never liked MAC and I'm not tech savvy enough to understand how to switch over to Linux.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]