Depending which view you ascribe to, last week's announcement that Google had purchased six month old Writely is either Microsoft's Pearl Harbor OR

NOT

Or in other words, is the beginning of the end of Office Products? Will users adopt Writely with the enthusiasm and speed of social media like Flickr and You Tube? Does this represent a sea change of how we will do our jobs, or is it simply another sailboat on the lake?

Writely is

a web-based, collaborative document editor, but it's also a service in its infancy. To us, it's the beginning of a whole new way of managing documents, projects and websites online.

The anti-microsoftists contend that this purchase is beginning of the end of Office.They see it as a victory for Web 2.0 The Microsoft Supporters say,not so fast--Microsoft's main business is from corporations and they are not so eager to have their confidential documents stored in an online space.

In her blog,Writely, co-founder Claudia Carpenter talks about why they sold to Google.

Here are our "top 10" reasons why being part of Google is fantastic for Writely and the Writely team:

10. Writely is like a caterpillar that we hope to make into a beautiful butterfly at Google!
9. We love Google's philosophy and values -- especially "Focus on the user."
8. We're as passionate as Google is about respecting users' privacy.
7. Many of our users are already Google fans using other Google services.
6. Being at Google will help us do more great things faster.
5. Some people didn't feel comfortable trusting a tiny startup with their documents...and we're no longer a tiny startup.
4. We like lava lamps and they're pretty much standard decor at Google.
3. Three words: Free Googleplex lunches ;)
2. As fun as it's been to launch a popular, global, 24x7 Web service, it'll be nice to take a vacation once in a while!
...and the number one reason???
1. We'll be able to bring Writely to not just thousands but millions of users -- the more, the merrier :-)

You can read a complete review of Writely at Googlist.

True Confession: Until last week I had paid absolutely no attention to the online document processing market. And, I probably wouldn't know anything about it if my windows media player had not stopped operating and I learned(6 hrs with technical support over 3 days) that there is no way to uninstall or fix it.

So to humor myself, I decided to read some Microsoft hate posts to calm myself down.That's when I found Writely. I did sign up for their waiting list.

My question is ...will you use Writely? If you won't,why not?