TechCrunch published yesterday screenshots of the upcoming Google’s Ajax calendar application, CL2, here. Rumours have been around long that Google is developing such an application and from the screenshots it looks that the smoke was not without any fire. And today Om Malik has published rumours heard in the corridors of money that Google is set to acquire Writely. With CL2, Gmail and Writely, Google office on the web might be a reality sooner than many expected.
Apart from its tight integration with GMail, the ability of CL2 to discover new events is an indication of the differentiating features of this application vis-a-vis the numerous other such calendar applications. And this seems to be the first time Google has jumped into the sharing space, a move that I believe has far greater ramifications than just being a killer calendar feature. Apart from the capability to search and discover events and to deliver notifications via a gamut of media (mail, SMS) will really set this product apart.
The slides at the Google’s analyst day discussing GDrive coupled with the Writely rumours gives me a feeling that the ePIc video predicting a Google/Amazon grid around 2014 is well on its course to reality. Today Google seems to be the only player capable of delivering on this vision; by leveraging and upgrading the massively parrallel system they have built. While the applications themselves can be copied easily, delivering the scalability and reliability of Google will take considerable time to achieve; though many including Microsoft have their hopes.
What does this bode for the numerous Web 2.0 startup each tackling at varying levels, the problem of delivering user content and services on the Web.?They will either be bought over or will die, one can assume. By ensuring interoperability of data between its various applications (Gmail, CL2, Google Base, GDrive) Google and other big players will have an advantage that cannot be replicated very easily. The only hope for the smaller players lies in the adoption of global standards in terms of how content is published and delivered so that their applications achieve smooth interoperability with others. However even with global standards the tricky problem of how data is modelled by each of these applications will probably still remain limiting how useful synergies between small independent players can be.
The prospect of a Google grid is at once frightening and exhilarating. That we are on the path of freedom from desktops seems evident now. The question remains on what exactly is the utopian/dystopian end of this path? Are we seeing the rise of the biggest brother of them all?
