New Google Products
Apparently Google is about to announce a new online spreadsheet product. My first reaction was - that's stupid, who would want to have their spreadsheet app. online -- its slower and probably less secure. Online applications strike me as a step back to the bad old days of mainframe-terminal applications.
But then I thought about my 30 managers who send me excel spreadsheets each week with their revenue data, and it occurred to me that this might be exactly what we need. Its a constant headache keeping everyone on the right version and managing all these submissions. Also, it would be nice if we can eliminate buying 40 copies of MS Office. Currently we are implementing OpenOffice 2.0 to eliminate the MS Office expense, but a real online collaborative spreadsheet solution at Google type pricing (e.g. zero) might be cool.
I don't see it up on their site yet, but they have a lot of cool stuff in Beta I had never played with before. Check out Google Labs here.
Ironman:
Don't forget that MS Office products are often bloated with features that many if not most users will never utilize! There's a lot to be said for a stripped-down, streamlined product.
June 6, 2006, 11:23 amHalf Sigma:
There's a noticeable delay downloading Gmail everytime I go there, I wonder how much heavier the spreadsheet is going to be.
Google says that not download is required, which means it's pure javascript.
June 6, 2006, 11:32 amMost:
I'm jazzed. If it handles the half dozen routine tasks I use Excel for, I've bought my last copy of MS Office. Everything else I use came with OS X or iWork.
June 6, 2006, 12:59 pmnick d:
Wasn't there a full on flight simulator buried in one of the older versions of excel? If you have space, junk will fill it up applies...
June 6, 2006, 2:11 pmFritz:
I would read their privacy policy really, really carefully before using that service with any sensitive data. Considering that Google's entire revenue stream comes from data...
June 6, 2006, 5:45 pmDave:
I have a screen shot of Google Spreadsheet at http://dfriedman.typepad.com/dave_friedmans_blog/2006/06/google_spreadsh.html , if you're interested.
It's a pretty basic offering. I'd like to see it become much more robust if I were to consider using it.
But then I suspect my Excel needs are rather different from most people's needs.
June 6, 2006, 5:49 pmHalf Sigma:
Yes there was a flight simulator in an older version of Excel. I bet Google won't do that.
June 7, 2006, 7:10 am