gOffice applications are free to users and funded by ads. The company intends to offer subscriptions for customers, particularly businesses, that don't want ads, Warnock said. The number of registered users is in the "five figures," but the company hopes to grow to 2 million users, with many expected to be outside the U.S.
Still, displacing Microsoft Office is not the company's goal.
"I think (gOffice) can hold a natural place alongside an Office suite in perpetuity. They don't have to beat out the other," Warnock said. He noted that people still use Web-based email, such as Hotmail or GMail, even though Microsoft's Outlook is pre-installed on many PCs.
Using AJAX and a Web-delivery model is allowing his start-up, with about 15 employees, to "bootstrap" the company, he said. "It's just a pragmatic way of getting out in front of a large number of people without raising money," Warnock said.
Business and consumer
Writely, gOffice and other Web-based productivity applications, such as 37Signals' to-do list and personal information management tool, or Web-based instant-messaging applications are aimed primarily at consumers. But IT executives and analysts say the impact of AJAX-style browser development will be felt in the business world as well.
A business could add more interactivity to an existing corporate Web site with AJAX and use XML-based data transfers to create "mash-ups" that pull information from different sources. For example, a real-estate Web site could pull information on schools and present it with house listings, noted Monson-Haefel.
Scott Dietzen, chief technology officer of e-mail and calendaring start-up Zimbra, expects AJAX to have a significant impact on business-to-business applications, such as financial services and telecommunications customers that demand a richer user interface. Zimbra's business-oriented products use AJAX extensively for data exchange, allowing a calendar entry, for example, to show a meeting location on Google Maps.
One corporate customer, Iconix Pharmaceuticals, has used AJAX with a toolkit from General Interface, a company later bought by integration software provider Tibco. Iconix built an application to give technicians at pharmaceutical companies a massive database and a sophisticated front end for tracking the effects of drugs on people.
Using AJAX, the company was able to build a complex user interface and connect to different data sources. Being Web-based means the product can be delivered over the Internet or installed on-premise, said Alan Roter, Iconix vice president of informatics.
"If we didn't use a Web-based UI (user interface), we would have to use a thick client and implement some type of client-server interface, as well as all the work to do the rendering. The advantage of being Web-based is that there is zero install, which is great," Roter said.
Roter said that Tibco's AJAX tools are slick, making the development time faster than with other languages. But, by and large, AJAX tooling still is not as mature as well-established products, according to analysts.
Monson-Haefel said the market "ecosystem" for commercial AJAX tools is immature. He expects AJAX eventually will become a mainstream development technique like Macromedia's offerings from Adobe or Microsoft's tools.
In the meantime, Writely's Schillace predicted that the growing popularity of AJAX will result in an excess of interactive features on Web pages. Indeed, some executives and analysts have feared a backlash against the over-application of AJAX techniques, resulting in highly interactive but poorly designed Web pages.
"AJAX is not a panacea," said Zimbra's Dietzen, noting that some applications, such as complex spreadsheets or presentations, demand desktop storage. "It's excellent for enriching traditional Web apps that need it. But not all Web applications need to have a richer UI. For the ones that do, AJAX is by far the best choice."
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