Is Writely Google's MS killer? Web app shows promise but isn't ready for primetime.

A few days ago I posted on the Explorer Blog about Google opening up beta testing for its online word processing app called Writely. Over the past few days I've conducted some basic tests to gauge how much of a Microsoft Office killer the program is and to see if the site truly lives up to the hype. I was surprised to see that Writely is completely branded independent of Google, and in fact only mentions that it's part of the search engine giant inside the Terms of Service. I was also surprised by how much the interface draws from the design of other WYSIWYG editors, even if there is a little MS Word inspiration thrown in for good measure.

My initial reaction to the app was exactly as described above, however I did take a moment to poke around with the interface. I easily created a document, typed in a bit of text and saved it. It was nice to see that you could either preview what you'd written or view the HTML rendering of the document. Doubtfully many people will use the HTML feature though, because the next test skips any kind of copy paste procedure and publishes your content directly.

I'm referring to the feature that allows you to post your documents directly to your blog. From the dropdown it looks like most of the major blogsites are supported as well as three of the popular posting APIs in case you want to post to your own server. After a few clicks my test document was posted on my personal blogspot page in nearly the same format as I'd created it.

During my initial session one thing that I tested that I found to be lacking was the grammar and spell checking feature. Actually there is no grammar check and the spellchecker provides few suggestions for words you were trying to spell. Still the feature is better than nothing and will catch most of the common typos.

The next day I decided to test the Word document import feature. Having worked with Office Doc formats, I fully expected this to be a bust. I was quite surprised in that Writely was able to import a simple word doc and retain most of the formatting. It did have a bit of trouble with tables, but that's generally a point of pain even between various versions of MS Word. I modified my table and then exported it back to a Word Doc format. The conversion worked fine, though it did feel the need to convert my table into a very poor quality graphic. Still I'd give the site a nod for trying.

Document formatting issues aside, Writely also offers a host of features that I've yet to test. Particularly interesting is the collaboration feature, which I assume works very similar to any of the major multi-user CMS packages. It will be interesting to see how/if Writely tracks revision changes and shows you the accompanying revision marks and notes. The mode provided for all of your personal documents is OK for original content, but really seems to have a problem with the documents imported from Word.

All in all I'd give Writely a 6/10 as a Microsoft Word killer. The app really isn't up to the task yet, and I'm not itching to ditch my fully featured word processor just yet. However this is a beta and I'm sure the final product will be greatly improved. That being said, as a web-only content creation and publishing package I think Writely is at least 8/10. The integration with blog sites as well as the notion of collaboration is an outstanding idea. Also by borrowing from WYSIWYG design I feel like the toolbar is easier to use than the logjam of buttons in MS Word or Adobe Acrobat.

In closing I'd say that Writely has a bright future in store, especially for casual composition and online activities. Though I seriously doubt Office will be dethroned in the business environment, I think Writely can make some serious inroads into the home user market. After all Writely accomplishes what MS Word users have wanted for years, a simple, easy to use WORD processor.