Google has bought Writely, an online word processor, for an undisclosed sum, as meniotned on the Google blog. It's not exactly clear why, because Google already has a simple but functional rich text editor in Gmail, and because Wrtitely was (like Orkut) built using Microsoft.net programming tools. However, it may have more to do with Writely's interesting and useful ability to share documents and collaborate on them via a browser -- which is, frankly, the only rational reason for using Writely if you've already got access to a PC and WordPad.
The Writely Web site now says: "We have closed off new registrations until we move Writely to Google's systems," while the Google blog post says: "we're not accepting new registrations until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture." Again, it's not clear what this means. However, Writely currently runs on Windows Server 2003, whereas Gmail runs on Linux.
