File this one in the “I am not sure what this means, but it looks cool and it may eventually be important” category.
gOffice intends to be a browser-based office suite. At present, it is a browser-based word processing program (kind of).
Using standard browsers (at least some of them), a user can create, save, and modify text documents (saved as PDFs). There are some limitations in what can be accomplished, but who knows where this may go.
This is a free product (the company wants $1 per month for some additional capabilities).
Imagine a situation in which most application software is used online rather than purchased and installed on individual machines. Perhaps there is no charge or the usage fee is very low. Consider how PCs could be made much more inexpensively (e.g., perhaps no harddrive if the data were also stored remotely). Note that any machine connected to the Internet would do.
(Forget that the client/server model is what those of us who have done this for many years started on and we discovered that we like being in charge of our own machines. Forget that java-based netPCs were going to change computing as we know it a few years ago and never materialized)
Speculation: When fully developed, I would bet this product will be bought up by a bigger player. I don’t see the business opportunities for the developers, but I can see how the product would extend the services offered by major (and competing) providers.
See Wired News analysis of the trend toward browser-based applications and how this trend may create change within the technology sector.
