A Word for Blogger re:Blogger for Word

So, I just logged on to post and saw this link to a new plug-in called Blogger for Word that one can use to post to Blogger straight from Word. While it's probably natural evolution and nifty and expanding target audience reach and all that jazz, I find myself driving the other way of late (definitely has nothing to do with actually finding myself driving the wrong way on a road:)

I'm writing in Blogger and copying into Word.

Isn't that weird? Does anyone else do it? I started when I was writing my essays a few months ago, and again when I was trying to write up something for the newspaper, and now i'm doing it for school stuff. I've actually thought about why this is, and I dare say I kinda understand.

On the actual editing front, Blogger has font and size support, which means I can customize my interface to use Courier, which is what I'd do in Word. I also don't need any fancy formatting or anything, and I have bullets and lists and alignment etc. In short, this is an acceptable-feature editor. At another level, I like the Preview feature :-) I don't know, there is something about seeing what I'm writing without all the menu and drop-boxes around. It's like a little extra that I don't get in Word.

But, I think the real reason has nothing to do with the mechanics of editors. It's all about experiences. On Blogger, it's like I've found a comfortable space, a sort-of virtual neighborhood coffee-shop if you will, to write. This is where I've become accustomed to coming for the last two years to be creative, to write with abandon, to be myself. Word was where I did my work stuff - the documents, the reports, the memos. Today, when I need to write something that needs creative thinking, I find myself doing my best job going where these associations lead me - Blogger!

I think this is something for Google to consider as they think about their next steps in taking over the world. Along with investing in talent to work on OpenOffice, they should probably investigate editor usage behaviors.

Where do people find themselves most 'comfortable' writing? Is it in Word, Notes, Notepad? Is it in an IM chat window, Typepad, on a discussion board? Blogger? Their email client? Post-It notes?

And, leading from that, can they think of ways to take users back to those environments when they need to use editing software? Is there a set of users out there that could make this feasible? I suspect that, though it would be cool, I am not a market of one.

As an illustration, give me the option to 'Save to Disk' in addition to 'Save as Draft' and 'Publish Post' on Blogger. It'll codify what I'm doing by hand, and you've got yourself a customer. I may still want to save this thing as an MS Word file, but that's childsplay.

In stretching my imagination, I can see users being able to create a single(or a small set of connected) 'word processing environments' that they can use for all their - again, we're thinking out of the box here - needs. Make me something that I'll pull up whether it's having to IM or write a blogpost or a document.

What is Google/Blogger saying with this? They acknowledge that Word is where most people go today to write. That's their space. And they want to make sure that there is a link to Blogger from that environment. That's what I'm trying to say too. Except, I don't understand why someone needs to cede this to Word. The web is changing and so are (i don't know if i should say 'and along with it' or 'because of') usage patterns. I think it's time to take a look at this evolution and understand what the next generation of text editors may look like.

Am I making any sense, or am I just losing it?