The year of online spreadsheets June 6, 2006
Posted by James Webster in : web, google , 3 commentsThe blogosphere is going gaga over news that Google will be launching Google Spreadsheets, most likely sometime Tuesday morning in the States. As might be expected, especially after Google acquired Writely, the pundits are claiming that this is yet another hammer in the coffin of Microsoft Office. To which I say, hogwash! Google have a terrific opportunity to steal alot of marketshare from Excel at the small end of the market, probably why the examples they have on their sneak peek are ‘little league timetables’ and the like. But in the heady world of investment banking that I am working at present, I doubt that the quants and accountants will be letting go of their intricately built Excel models anytime soon. But spreadsheets are defintely moving closer to servers and the web; from Dan Bricklin’s wikicalc to Excel Services which will be available in Office 2007.
Nevertheless I am looking forward to playing around with this. I expect and hope that an API based on GData is available soon. The small end of the market can be a profitable one, assuming Google has a way to monetize this (how do you use keyword-based advertising when the text in question is mostly numeric?). However it is disappointing that, just like Google Calendar, Safari will not be initially supported. Looks like there are some Mac-haters over at the Googleplex?