Title: Page 127 – Alex Kirk

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 * 
   ## 󠀁[No Google Office To Be Expected](https://alex.kirk.at/2005/10/09/no-google-office-to-be-expected/)󠁿
   
 * October 9, 2005
 * According to an [interview of Sergey Brin](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/08/google_office/)(
   founder of Google) by [John Battelle](http://battellemedia.com/), Google does**
   not** plan to publish a web based office, as rumored before (fueled by a [new partnership between Google and Sun (owner of openoffice.org)](http://news.com.com/Sun+and+Google+shake+hands/2100-1014_3-5888701.html)).
 * “I don’t really think that the thing is to take a previous generation of technology
   and port them directly,” he said. I agree with that. We have to think about new
   tools to be our future web apps. Just porting office apps to the web [won’t work](https://alex.kirk.at/2005/10/08/office-web-apps-are-just-proof-of-concepts/).
 * So what’s this deal about now? Google seems to want a wider distribution of their
   toolbar. According to the [Cnet coverage](http://news.com.com/Google+and+Sun+deal+Thats+it/2100-1012_3-5888798.html)(
   via John Battelle [again](http://battellemedia.com/archives/001914.php)):
 * “Details about what exactly that will entail were vague at best, with the only
   nugget offered being that Sun, in the immediate future, will make Google’s toolbar
   a standard part of the package when users download Sun’s Java Runtime Environment
   from the server seller’s Web site.”
 * Sergey Brin further stated that distributed thin web applications allowed you
   to do “new and better things than the Office package and more.” So further tools
   by Google can be expected.
 * google, office, sun, openoffice, ajax
 * [Code](https://alex.kirk.at/category/code/)
 * 
   ## 󠀁[Competitive Reproduction](https://alex.kirk.at/2005/10/09/competitive-reproduction/)󠁿
   
 * October 9, 2005
 * We’ve seen it serveral times in history. Company A launches a new, innovative
   product and company B takes it, copies it and wins the competition.
 * Not that we have come so far in just such a short time of AJAX apps but there
   are quite a few examples:
    - **RSS readers:** [Bloglines](http://www.bloglines.com/) (acquired by [AskJeeves](http://ask.com/)),
      [Rojo](http://www.rojo.com/), [BackBase](http://www.backbase.com/), [Pluck](http://www.pluck.com/),
      the newly launched [Google Reader](http://reader.google.com/), …
    - **Bookmarking:** [del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us/), [furl](http://www.furl.net/)(
      [LookSmart](http://www.looksmart.com/)), [de.lirio.us](http://de.lirio.us/),
      [digg](http://www.digg.com/), …
    - **Starting Pages:** [start.com](http://www.start.com/) (Microsoft), [Google Personal](http://www.google.com/ig),
      [My Yahoo](http://my.yahoo.com/), [Netvibes](http://www.netvibes.com/), …
    - **Writing apps:** [Writely](http://www.writely.com/), [Writeboard](http://www.writeboard.com/),
      [Jotspot Live](http://jotlive.com/), [Zoho Writer](http://www.zohowriter.com/),…
 * A nice conversation or rather a little fight on words has started between the
   listed writing apps: an article in [TechCrunch reported about Zoho Writer](http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/02/zoho-writers-ajax-word-processor/).
   In the comments for this article Jason Fried of 37signals (author of Writeboard)
   and Sam Schillace (from Writely) seem very annoyed about “such blatant rips”.
 * But haven’t we seen this earlier? Competition keeps the market alive. You cannot
   rest on your laurels. You have to prove that you deserve the predominant position.
   So if such a competitior beats you with your own product you have done something
   wrong, or simply waited to long. See IBM vs. Microsoft 1980, Microsoft vs. Google
   2005. If you’re better anyway you don’t have to fear a thing.
 * Some interesting thoughts about this can be found at [Bokardo: Web-based Office Competition Heats Up](http://bokardo.com/archives/web-based-office-competition-heats-up/).
 * [Web](https://alex.kirk.at/category/web/)

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