June 9: Google Apps Announcements?

Image via CrunchBase

A rumor is floating around that on Tuesday, June 9, Google will host a get together in San Francisco to spotlight Google Apps. The company will make some Google Apps announcements and have some corporate customers talk about the product.

Hopefully, the company will do more than brag about the fact that GAPE recently began supporting Office 2007 documents. Given that the spec has been out for three years and some of the applicable code is open source, that recent announcement is one that underwhelms me.

Here are some that would do the opposite:

• "We've scrapped the code we inherited from the consumer business, completely rewritten the apps, and we're happy to report that Google Apps Premier Edition is now enterprise ready."
• "To highlight that Google Apps is much more of a collaboration product than a productivity suite product, we're renaming Google Apps to Google Collaboration."
• "Google Apps has been rewritten using Adobe AIR or Microsoft Silverlight so the user interface is much close to a rich client without all the overhead."
• "We have finally rewritten the underlying data model for Google Apps Premier Edition so that administration is much easier, security is stronger, and records management is built in, rather than an afterthought."

Now we just have to wait and see what Google actually says.

Comments

[Saqib Ali]

Guy,

Do you have a list of attendees?

Saqib

[M Labbe]

Given that the Google Wave presentation spent a lot of time touting the wonders of HTML5 I doubt that they'd re-implement anything in AIR or Silverlight.

[Saqib Ali]

Good point Mr. Labbe.

Who needs AIR or Silverlight anyways when you have AJAX?

[Guy Creese]

Saqib, no, sorry, I don't have a list of attendees.

As to why you would use AIR or Silverlight instead of AJAX, there are two reasons I can think of. First, it makes the development process easier: you have a development environment that keeps track of all the pieces parts for you; AJAX requires that you do that. Also, you can create a "cooler" interface with RIA environments that is closer to the rich client experience.

[Saqib Ali]

Guy,

I would have agreed with you last year. But Google just released Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 1.6 and GWT Plugin for Eclipse.

GWT lets you create Javascript (AJAX) based front-end for applications using Java. It essentially compiles Java code into Javascript (AJAX). Which is very powerful. You longer have write AJAX code by hand.

Saqib

[records management]

Hi Saqib Ali, Here I am highly agreed with you. GWT is one of powerful Plug-in for Eclipse. We can easily create front-end application using it. Actually, GWT has made our work easier. I worked for GWT about 1 year and made DAK project using it. DAK is used to create any kind of user interface according to your requirements. We can also apply different kind of constraints and validation on text box, check box etc.