While every third blogger reports on the sale of Ajax-based word processor company Writely to Google, I’ve been playing with a similar piece of software that emulates PowerPoint. Thumbstacks provides the tools for slide show creation on your browser and stores your presentation online, so you can start and run it from anywhere you can connect. You can make your presentations private or share them, as I have with this one that I created just to see how it worked. (It’s not comprehensive, just a test of the app.)

This is alpha software so it’s missing a lot of functionality, such as transitions, builds, and the like. There are only three themes (although you can edit a background yourself). Still, this is pretty slick and easy to use. On the plus side, you don’t have to carry presentations with you. On the downside, I’ve presented in plenty of places without Internet connectivity, so you’d have to choose to use this carefully.

Still, if Google is looking to create a suite to compete with Office, it shouldn’t be a surprise if Thumbstacks is the search giant’s next acquisition. On that point, however, both applications have a long, long, long way to go to be able to compete head-to-head with office. The functionality I rely on in applications like Word and PowerPoint are just not available in these Web 2.0 applications (mail merge in Word, sound files in PowerPoint, for example). I have no doubt, however, that they will eventually appear in applications like these. Exciting times.