GigaOM

Google launching web spreadsheet tomorrow…

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is going to launch a web-based spreadsheet tomorrow.

Google Spreadsheet, which will be made available on a limited test basis, follows Google’s March purchase of a company offering a Web-based …

These new online apps are great. I’m using Yahoo! mail (beta) and it’s a perfect example of the advantages of online versus desktop. It eliminates configuration, syncronization, backup, and it’s much safer.

Google’s spreadsheet is wonderful. It will be great for most usage (95% probably). Centralized and protected. Accessible from any computer by anyone at anytime!

Security will need to be tight in order for this to work. I would hazard a guess that over 90% of spreadsheets contain sensitive data. Not the type of thing that corporations will want to lose control over. Although I suppose the same could be said for text documents too.

I don’t think it will be iRows…iRows already has charting capability, and apparently the Google Spreadsheet (GS) does not. Also, GS is supposed to be tabbed, and I don’t think iRows does that yet.

Funny thing, I just got my monthly iRows newsletter (for June) 47 minutes ago. No mention of Google…

Dave

Dave and all - I updated the story. I think iRows is not the one. It was a bit of a false alarm. I apologize to all readers.

The service is based on technology from 2Web Technologies, a company that Google acquired last year, Google told vnunet.com

http://www.vnunet.com/2157590

Tom - I don’t see a reference to 2Web in that story…was it maybe another one that you were thinking of or do you think the vnunet story has been revised?

No surprise here. Who will be next, thumbstacks for presentation software or Gliffy for diagramming? Then what about MS Access or Project-like apps?

Security will be a concern for enterprises as a lot of companies do not allow their documents to be remotely stored.

Or even remotely worked on, nevermind remotely stored!

i guess this means someone else is going to buy dabbledb!

cheers, mark

Tom, not finding the 2Web reference.

For small companies and individuals, I truly believe the risk for most users is greater on their own desktop than with Google secured storage. I’m a security fanatic, yet I see such a high risk in security today that a Google app really doubles as a useful tool and a secure mechanism, above and beyond 90% of users.

Try http://zohosheet.com/home.do which seems to have beaten Google to the party! :-)

I think it can be http://editgrid.com . This is one the best apps out there, with muti-user editing.

If its a Google , then it has to be a goodie …Now if they can only come up with a Kick Ass O/S and blow it out the Window.

If you want to organise the world’s information, it is a lot easier if it is in your format.

The spreadsheet product isn’t for company budgets and other internal grinding, where you have all the “is my data safe stored outside the building” and “my macro can do more than yours” issues. There might be some Microsoft Office deflections, but that’s surely a bonus.

Google HAD to do a spreadsheet because it is simply the best, most flexible, easy to use database currently available. It and Writey are nice big widgets, not serious standalone programs. The future is what you can do with them.

A spreadsheet gets data into Google in a slightly more structured format. Think a GUI for GoogleBase. Think integration into Google page creator, then look at anycalc.com, powered by XL2Web, which just happens to have been founded by Jonathan Rochelle, the Google spreadsheet product manager. The analogy is Google Earth and the acquisition of SketchUp.

Instead of the baroque complexity of Office and its islands of data, give people a tool to use information. Spreadsheet and Writely are just seamless components of that vision. You win by changing the rules, not by a feature-for-feature race with Excel or Word.

Google Spreadsheet…

Om says that Google Spreadsheet will be launching on Tuesday. If Google does launch this then that means they will have, essentially, rounded out a web based office suite. Ought to be interesting to see if this rumour is true.
…

Google is directly competing with open source projects like OpenOffice and Sun’s free StarOffice.

Google acquired Writely (word processing) and now has a spreadsheet. There was speculation last year that Google would partner with Sun to offer a version of StarOffice. Instead Google has decided to go its own way and compete with OpenOffice and StarOffice.

C/Net says “Google spreadsheets turns up heat on Excel” I don’t think so. Microsoft Office is a powerful, industrial strength, client based, information worker productivity platform. Microsoft Office is moving beyond just being a collection of applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) to being a server based application platform for ISVs. Lots of companies run their business on Excel spreadsheets. Now creative start-ups are using Office as a front end User Interface to a whole variety of business applications.

I wrote a blog on this subject today http://dondodge.typepad.com/thenextbigthing/2006/06/googlecompetin.html

http://spreadsheet.google.com/

The Google spreadsheet is now available for the invited test users!

Looks like a good collaborative product. i think they’ve done a good job tying it in with their IM service. it’ll be interesting to see what the adoption rate is like. definitely not for enterprise users, but would be useful for small-time team projects that require collaboration.

I think they’ll also integrate this into the gmail interface, if the initial reaction to the product is good.

GMail is really the one app that can tie a lot of google services together.

Manual trackback -

http://rajatgupta.wordpress.com/2006/06/06/google-spreadsheet-review/

I wrote up a quick review of Google Spreadsheets along with some screenshots I made in the process. You can read it here:

http://www.gobabble.net/2006/06/06/google-spreadsheets-a-first-look/

Tom’s comments about 2Web Technologies and Om Malik not being able to see the reference. Fourth paragraph down, simple to spot.

Here’s the paragraph in full:

The service supports Microsoft Excel documents as well as the CSV format, and is based on technology from a company called 2Web Technologies that Google acquired last year, a company spokesperson told vnunet.com.

I know this thread is months old, but hey, thought Tom deserved his moment of fame - he wrote the article after all!