Writely + Google Spreadsheets = Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Today I found out that Google combined Writely and Spreadsheets. I haven't seen this announced anywhere, but I might have missed it. The new service is now called Google Docs & Spreadsheets (from now on GDS). I wonder why don't they just call it Google Office, it is much easier!!

Being a user of both Writely and Google Spreadsheets, I will write down the main differences I have noted in the hour I've been using the new GDS.

GDS now uses Writely's file manager to list both docs and spreadsheets. I am really happy about this, since I was missing this on the old Spreadsheets. All the main actions remain: tag, delete, archive, star, delete. The old Writely design has been changed to match all other Google services, and the Writely brand is nowhere to be seen. So we can assume that the Writely aquisition is complete.

Following are some minor changes/bugs:

• When trying to assign/remove tag to files, the tag list is not complete. However if you click on the Browse D&S button it will show all my tags. I am sure this will be rectified in the future.
• There is an unarchive button that I don't think was in Writely. Usually active docs are those modified in the last 30 days. Older files are archived. The unarchive button simply changes the timestamp of a file to "7 hours ago" and bumps it up to the active list. This doesn't seem an elegant way to do this, I wish they could come up with something better, but for the moment it works.
• It is now possible to save any file as PDF. I tried saving a spreadsheet but it didn't look very good. Maybe I have to play with the settings.
• Not sure if this is new, but it is now possible to open gmail attachments with GDS, which is a very nice integration of services.
• Posting to a blog works as well as before, even updating the post. I tried updating with Writely but it didn't work in the past.

There are probably other things, but I haven't found them yet. What's missing is blogging to Blogger Beta, and setting up multiple blogs.

Overall I am very happy with this change, it still needs some bug fixing and important features, but this is already a great product. Next step: presentation files?