Productivity Apps In The Cloud

Last week at the D conference, Walt Mossberg asked Bill Gates about Writely and Bill dismissed it with something along the lines of:

Our basic text editor has more functionality than Writely

It was as if Bill couldn’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would want to use an editor as inferior in functionality as Writely.

Except all of Microsoft’s editors, including the flagship editor Word, lack the simple functionality of being able to edit and save directly on the web.

And as I sit here dreaming about being able to use Google Spreadsheet, that is the one function I want.

I could care less about 10,000 fonts, tracking changes, macros, and all the other features and functions that Microsoft has piled into Word over the past 20 years.

I simply care about being able to write from wherever I am and make it available to whomever I want via the web. That is the single most important feature to me that trumps everything else.

And I can’t figure out if Bill gets that and is just buying time until there are enough other people like me who value having my apps in the cloud or if he doesn’t even see how incredibly important ubiquitous access of the app and the document is.

I think it’s the former because I think Bill’s a very smart guy, but he sure acted like its the latter in the interview with Mossberg last week.

#VC & Technology