Google has acquired Writely, the maker of a web-based
word processor, further illustrating its intention to offer more
desktop services.
Google, which bought Writely for an undisclosed sum, has not so
far laid out its integration plans for the company.
The Writely word processing service is still currently in beta
mode and there is a waiting list of people wanting to get their
hands on the technology.
Writely was launched last August by the Upstartle company. A
“Save to PDF (Portable Document Format)” function was added to
Writely last December.
It was originally planned to offer a paid-for version of the
service once a number of premium functions came out of beta.
Writely can handle documents saved in the open-source
OpenDocument Format, and files created in the open-source Open
Office suite, which is a small rival to Microsoft’s Office
collaboration suite.
Google has a strategy of offering an increased range of hosted
desktop productivity tools, to encourage greater user loyalty to
its web portal brand.
Like Microsoft, Yahoo and others, Google realises that an
increased number of hits on its portal leads to greater web
advertising revenues.
Last week, it emerged that Google was planning to launch an
on-line data back-up service to users. The plan was discovered by a
blogger searching the Google corporate site. The information was
later taken down.