Writely Getting Tightly

More tightly integ­rated with its owner, that is. I’ve always wondered how Writely was supposed to make any money. Today’s email brings a clue. New users or the users you invite to col­lab­orate on doc­u­ments will need to get them­selves a gmail/​gcalendar/​gpersonalised account to par­ti­cipate. Good move, I think. Writely is a cool tool, but it’s a poor vehicle for advert­ising. If it starts to pull its weight by drawing more people into the Google empire, then it will remain free and a focus for devel­op­ment for a bit longer.

One spot of weird­ness: I already have a gmail account, though it wasn’t the one I used to sign up for Writely. Hope there’s some way along the line to switch my doc­u­ments over if the integ­ra­tion goes further — and I hope it does.

Dear ********

In a few days, we will be switching over to Google Accounts for Writely regis­tra­tion and sign-​​in.

To make things simple, we will create a new Google account for you at *********@********.com as part of the migra­tion process.
You don’t have to do anything dif­ferent — just sign in as usual, and your doc­u­ments will be right there.

For more inform­a­tion about signing into Writely with your Google Account, see the FAQ at http://www.google.com/support/writely/bin/topic.py?topic=8615
Thanks!
Google Writely Team

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