Google spreadsheet showing promise
Google is the heavy weight of search, but not so much in the realm of productivity software. Despite the successful launch of some software such as gmail, Google is still trying to find its way in the area of office software.
It is, however, trying hard. Only this year we saw Google buying writely, a novel company with a online service that imitates Microsoft word. Now, they released an online spreadsheet, called, for lack of better name, Google Spreadsheets.
First, we should say that the service is not a replacement for excel, especially if you are a heavy user of more advanced features. However, Google spreadsheets has some nice features, of which I think the more appealing are:
1 - Allow easy sharing of spreadsheet information. You couldn't do that with MS office easily, since excel documents need a copy of excel installed in any computer they will be viewed.
2 - Allow simple computation without excel. In the past, just to do some quick calculations I need to open MS excel. Now, I can just do it easily by clicking on a link to Google Spreadsheets.
It is not much, but I think it is enough to keep people interested in the product and make it grow. Google knows how to improve products incrementally, as it has done with Gmail, and Google Maps. I think Google Spreadsheets will follow a similar pattern. Maybe we are seeing an excel killer just in its infancy...
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