My previous article “Can Writely Kill MS-Word?” got some good response in form of emails and comments. I am republishing the comments here to throw some light on this issue. Most of the emails that I received felt that writely wouldn’t dent word even a tiny bit.

Oxyrubber says -

Even if Writely had every feature MS Word has (and I sincerely hope that isn’t the intention of the development team), it will not satisfy the requirements of a Word Processor for all users.

Google makes no claims to secure your data and they have access to the contents of your data for indexing (just like almost all of their services).

Corporations don’t want company secrets being transmitted to locations outside of their property. Storing company property in such a way is usually against a company’s IT policies and procedures.
Government agencies and contractors have to worry about keeping confidential files… well, confidential. Sure, you can wrap the Word Processor session in an HTTPS session, but that is not nearly as secure as never transmitting the data in the first place.

What do you do when your ISP’s connection to your location goes down? You no longer have access to your work (or your client’s work or …). What do you do if you need to get something written and formatted while you are on a plane (or anywhere that doesn’t allow you access to a Wireless connection).

One last qualification: a free word processor service with enough features will no doubt eat into the $500-a-license MS Office market, but it won’t overtake all locally stored, native word processors.

Jeroen adds :

Why Writely will not defeat Word’s market share:

- As stated in the previous comment: a company or a caring individual would not want his/her data on someone elses hard drive.

- Noone want’s to be dependant on their ISP to be able to view or edit information and if I’m going to save a local copy ‘just-in-case’ I’d still need a word processor to be able to open it. Purpose defeated.

- Collaboration (one of the key features according to their site) is only interesting for students and kids, since that group (initialy) doesnt have the know-how to setup and maintain their own webserver, with groupware application. Everybody else will have a webserver running with a good groupware / content management suite.

- All you need is a browser!! …. and the Java runtime. So never mind using writely with an old computer, your Java will run so slow you will quickly revert to pen & paper.

How secure are my documents?

Very! We take security very seriously. A layered security architecture ensures that only people you authorize can view or modify a document.

ow come they dont go into detail ? Sure, security through obscurity is nice, but not very trust-generating.

But maybe I should have started to look under:

Who can see my documents?

It depends on the options you’ve selected. For example, if you’d prefer that only a few people see your document, you can invite them via email. They’ll then be sent a password that allows them access to your document.

On the other hand, you can allow a larger group of people to see your document by adding them as collaborators. Then, the collaborators you add, as well as anyone they add, will be able to access your document.

OUCH!!!! Anyone I (they?) mail a (random?) password… Please dont tell me that my document security relies on someone using his/her email with care. We all know that almost anyone is a hot target for worms, viruses and trojans. Not only because there will always be vulnerabilities, but more because a PC is not Personal anymore. The whole family sits behind the thing and installs / removes what not.

Sure you have the same problem with document files you email to others, but they are single documents, not a document repository.

Take notice of the “… and anyone they add” part concerning collaborators.

If you want students to exchange homework fast and easy, this is for you.
If you want a serious approach to security, content management, storage management and availability at no licensing cost you should maintain your own webserver with content management or groupware system installed, and mail the OpenOffice link around. Open Office is the free, Open Source application aimed to replace the COMPLETE office suite. Not just the Word Processor.

I would like to continue this discussion. Please comment on this article and if I feel that your argument is worthy to be in the post, I will promote it immediately. So, what’s your take on it?

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