Initial Thoughts on Google Spreadsheets

We took Google’s latest baby on a test drive, and our first reaction: Gadzooks! It works That might be pretty much an over-hyped reaction to Google Spreadsheets, but we’re just so excited about the prospect of soon being able to do all our office-related computing online, anywhere there’s an Internet connection, and without having to purchase expensive Office suite applications.

Microsoft must be trembling with fear right now. It’s worst worries have been confirmed–now Google doesn’t only have a word processor to match MS Word, it actually has a working spreadsheet application that can rival MS Excel.

Okay, it’s not as if Google Spreadsheets can beat the heck out of MS Excel in terms of performance. At first glance, it was not that great in terms of speed. It is, after all, a Web-based application, and you will definitely be slowed down by bandwidth considerations. Not so much if you’re on broadband, but when you try using any AJAX-based application on dial-up, you would surely feel a bit of slowing down.

Collaboration in action!

Also, while Google Spreadsheets can import Excel and CSV files, you would most probably have issues when you’re already dealing with very large spreadsheets, as may be the case when you already have several hundred rows or columns of figures. But then again, you probably won’t have to handle such large sets of data online unless you really have to.

As for collaboration, being able to invite others to view and even edit your spreadsheets real-time is a great way to share information. You can use this for project tasking (with itemized completion/status indicators, perhaps). You can also use this to share schedules, calendars and invitations.

However, what’s limiting in all these is that Google has every cool application imaginable, but limited collaboration ability for users. True, you could collaborate on Spreadsheets, but what about calendar (limited to read-access) and even word processing (Writely is still limited, and is separate from Spreadsheets). What would be really interesting is something integrated–sort of like the Microsoft Office suite, but on the web. Now that’s something that would scare the pants off Microsoft!

Kudos to Google, still, for bringing out yet another useful application!