Online Office Suite Hype

Rumor says Google is going to announce the web based office software suite that consists of Writely, Spreadsheet, and a presentation tool tomorrow. Honestly this is a brave move, as so far there seems no substantial monetary justification of providing this kind of free software online, and it is unclear how small business is going to embrace it.

Zoho is also providing free office suite. Both are trying to clone user experience of Microsoft Office, but in a way that allows more direct collaboration.

It is expected that Microsoft may start to offer similar things pretty soon (totally personal thought).

I believe this is a hype.

The web is a completely new platform for office applications. You got to re-think everything - is it still a good approach to have Word-like, Excel-like, and PowerPoint-like tools separated with limited co-operations? How about getting all these pieces into a more natural tool that is more suitable for the web era? Do I hear Lotus Notes or something like that?