You’ll soon be able to type “Word.new” to open a new Word document, thanks to Google

For anyone hesitant about Google’s slow ingestion of the internet, today’s news of the company’s .new website shortcuts initiative may give you further pause, but for others, the expansion of PWA integration may be a welcomed convenience.

Get information faster with this .new browser trick to open a new Google Form → https://t.co/hUAZK9SUbe pic.twitter.com/AEotujOoHS

— Google Docs (@googledocs) October 29, 2019

In 2018 Google unveiled its .new links to help create shortcuts linking to Google Docs and today the company expanded that link portfolio to now include domains open to the public and Microsoft has been among the first to sink its teeth into this integration by registering “word.new” to enable word doc linking and creation.

Other businesses that have jump on board the .new train include Medium, Spotify, Webex, Stripe Canva and Bitly. Unfortunately, the integration is less seamless than Google’s own implementation due to login issues. With .new for Google, users of Chrome typically tend to be signed into their services automatically, but for other services to offer the same sort of experience they need to be signed into the services before spinning up a .new shortcut link.

At the moment, it’s unclear how Microsoft plans to work around the log in issue as the shortcuts aren’t quite ready for primetime, but presumably they will work in a similar fashion when using Edge on Windows, Android or Mac and will follow the same rules as every other service when not linked to a Microsoft service prior.

Google claims that any company can register their domains that include .dev, .page, and .app to secure HTTPS connections. Interestingly enough, the .new domains will be available for limited public consumption as soon as December 2, 2019, while trademark owners will have to wait until January 14, 2020, to register their trademark .new domains.