Wow this is awesome. My long-planned side project for the summer was to build Operational Transform as an API, but it seems Google has beat me to the punch. I'm glad to see it's them doing it though, as they know OT better than anyone else in the world and I won't have to entertain the idea that I could have done it better.

So basically, they realised how handy google waves collaborative features were and now their bringing them back!

This is very likely derived from Google Docs, not Wave. The spreadsheet app has been based on this approach (immediate synchronization via operation transforms) since way back, and the document and presentation apps were rewritten to the same approach a few years ago. It sounds like they're now simply opening up that backend for third parties... which is pretty cool, actually.

(Background: I worked on Writely, the original Docs word processor. I wasn't involved in the work described here, but saw some of it happening. It's nice stuff.)

This is a common pattern for Google - they have many times 'killed' a product while folding its key features into another product.

For anyone looking for an open source alternative to this: http://sharejs.org/

Similar to the Realtime API but without Google or the social integrations.

Wait, they host their examples on GitHub? I thought Googlers were supposed to dogfood Google Code?

well , maybe they are going to drop google code soon , you know it is not "money making" enough...

Is this basically what firebase.com does?

I trust Google like I trust a viper in bed.

Google for realtime? How long before they cancel it? No way I'd rely on Google for realtime when there's meteor/node/faye/etc/etc.

I'm under the impression that Google Drive is a money-making enterprise. Reader was not. In light of that, my question wouldn't be whether this will be canceled, but would be how much you will pay for depending on access to this API when they decide to rationalize the rates.

Given how little effort Google puts into updating, bugfixing or providing any kind of support to those paying for Drive, I seriously doubt this is a money-making enterprise.

Drive hasn't really evolved since it was launched almost a year ago when everyone suspected it may be Google's long awaited DropBox-killer.

What are some evolutions you'd like to see? It seems basically feature compatible with dropbox, plus the added benefit of being able to edit documents in-place on the web. The only think that I want and it does not have is a fuse client for linux.

> being able to edit documents in-place on the web

Last time I checked only a handful of file types were editable in Drive. I can edit source files in Dropbox but Drive simply downloads them.

Drive's file manager is also very limiting while Dropbox's feels much more like a desktop experience. I can archive, unarchive, copy, paste etc. with ease.

Source files are now editable using the app from the blog post mentioned in the story we are discussing.

Apparently just being "money-making" is not enough, it has to have an enormous userbase and also be aligned with Google's strategy du jour.

I absolutely love that people aren't just forgetting about Reader.

To say that people aren't forgetting reader would be calling the game in the first inning. It isn't even actually shut down yet. Check back in a year when everyone has switched to other news readers and the world hasn't ended.

It's precedent that Google is willing to take down a popular service in order to push other goals.

This is something a lot of people miss. No one minds Google shuttering Reader for good reasons, but they failed to communicate said reasons, and left us to speculate. That speculation has settled on things that make a lot of people feel bad about where Google is heading.

1 million active users is not "popular" in Google terms. So-called tech "influencers" like to believe that they are more useful/valuable than any random user, but guess what, you aren't.

If you read HN, you're worth at least 10 users. We're special!

Careful, you might mistakenly be accused of being an "astroturfer": https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=andyl

No - I have absolutely nothing to be careful of. I'm not a secret front for an anti-Google marketing campaign. I'm just a dude who values the OpenWeb, and I believe that Google's actions w.r.t. Reader have damaged RSS. I don't like it, and I don't trust Google's motives.

Now - who are you, and who made you the speech police? Why are you advocating on behalf of Google, and why are you bringing ad-homenim attacks against me and others who question Google's products and business practices?

hyp-o-crite: one who accuse others of astroturfing while concealing his/her own identity behind an anonymous userid.