Google Spreadsheets -- Part of the big picture

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I got up this morning to realise that I had an invitation in my Gmail inbox for Google Spreadsheets. I went upto Google site to check it out and in a rush created a spreadsheet as below.
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I was not really thinking much but just trialing different features of the spread sheet and see what is there and what isn't. To confess I don't use Microsoft Excel extensively and may be I am one of those person who hardly uses 3% of the features Microsoft Excel has in it. So I started asking myself as to why I would use Google Spreadsheets and why would I recommend somebody else to use Google Spreadsheets? I agree with many posts written during the day, that Gooogle Spreadsheets is not intended to be a direct competition with Microsoft Excel (although it is in some ways). So why will I use Google Spreadsheets:- · Using Google Spreadsheets I can easily collaborate with other users, i.e. both myself and other users can work on the same spreadsheet at the same time · I can communicte with other users with whom I am collaborating (Although it would be a great feature if the chat logs are stored in Gmail for Gmail users) · I can share my spreadsheets on the fly · I can store my spreadsheets online meaning that they will be available where ever I have an Internet connection (well for Google to establish that trust is another issue) · For my simple tasks it is simple to use without having over killing features · WHEN I DON'T HAVE MICROSOFT EXCEL VIEWER NOR MICROSOFT EXCEL, I CAN STILL VIEW THE SPREADSHEET USING GOOGLE SPREADSHEETS · I hope down the track Google will have a feature within Gmail where I can open my attached spread sheets within the email directly in Google Spreadsheets · Did I mention that I found it to be a great collaborative tool Now for what I think is the big picture. I think Google will use Google Spreadsheets and Google Document (Writely) on a big high when Google comes out with Google Drive (GDrive). If people start trusting Google to store all their offline data on Google Servers, then Google can easily draw them to view, edit, save and share the documents online. Now people will no longer have to install Microsoft Office Viewers on their computers when they don't have Microsoft Office installed, they can just open the documents with Google Office Suite. So ultimately, Google will drive casual Microsoft Office users away from Microsoft Office Suite I think. And why would I buy expensive Microsoft Office Suite, if all I do is use it once in a while and that to just draft few documents without any need of special features? This is not to say that I will un-install Microsoft Office Suite from my computer, but now I have an option, an alternative. This makes me think as to how web is making me switch products easily. I know I could install Open Office on my system, but I never did that. That conversion never appealed to me, but ... So could we expect Google Drive to be the next biggest product from Google? I think that might take a while before it comes out. Google has to do a big job integrating their products together before it can neatly tie Gdrive with other Google products. Competition is good, consumers are happy at the end. Innovation is at the high. So Microsoft what are you going to come up with now? I get this thought again and again that Microsoft is loosing it edge on some of the competition. I am sure the projects they are doing is huge and time consuming, but they are always behind other competitors. I don't think I miss Microsoft at all when I am online (Internet), the only time I appreciate what they do is when I don't have an Internet connection and I think of the OS that I am working on and the Office application that I have to use at that stage!!! Good luck. Back to playing with Google Spreadsheets. Some links that you might want to read on Google Spreadsheets:- Techmeme Google Blogscoped Rough Type ZDNet J. LeRoy