Google Acquires Writely Developer Upstartle

Writely blog mistress Claudia Carpenter confirmed it in the Writely Blog on March 9th: Yes, we've been acquired by Google, and we're really excited about this for many, many reasons. And if you still doubted it, the byline on the Google Blog entry of the same date is pretty explicit: Jen Mazzon, one of the four Writely founders, is blogging as part of the Google Writely Team! To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it's far from perfect. Upholding our great user experience means everything to us, so we're not accepting new registrations until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture. So if you haven't tried out Writely yet, you're on hold until the move to Google is complete. I've been using it for about six months and it has a lot to recommend it. Most important, I think, is its collaboration model that let's you pick which individual users can share each document, creating a level of flexible security difficult to implement on your Windows LAN. And the docs can be uploaded from, or downloaded to, your desktop. In the wake of Yahoo's purchase of Flicker and del.icio.us, I think purchase puts an end to the vision some held that web2.0 would spell the end of the software giant dominance as "two, three, many small ventures offered innovative wares over the net. But it does seem Microsoft is going to have a tough battle to establish control of this space. And that's gotta be good for the rest of us. Tags: google, web2.0, nptech