Google has yet again given us a glimpse at the future of business productivity with the release of Google Spreadsheets. This is the killer AJAX/Web 2.0 app. Its intuitive interface and collaborative editing features paint a future of Google as the productivity center for companies. No software licensing. No version incompatibilities. No having to move files from work computer to laptop, etc.
They started with Gmail, which has become one of my primary email apps. Add to that Google Calendar which is yet another brilliant collaborative app. Combine all this with Gmail for Domains and you might have a picture of things to come. Imagine "Google Office for Domains" where you brand the entire google productivity suite: Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheets, and Writely with your company logo, and allow your users to have their own company based accounts. No longer do you worry about data backup, Google takes care of that for you. Your spreadsheet, word processing documents, calendars, etc are shared amongst your company and are available to the people that should be allowed to have them.
You won\'t have to worry about steep per computer licensing fees. Perhaps the revenue model is the current adwords model, perhaps it becomes a monthly fee. Regardless, where other companies and open source projects attempt to give you the tools to have similar apps on your local intranet or your own servers, Google\'s service based approach offers a much lower cost option while providing a higher level of functionality and reliability.
Google Spreadsheets is a full functionality browser based application with integrated chat and collaboration. As you change a cell, others in your document see it change. As you change a formula, it changes for them as well. Create a spreadsheet and invite others to participate in editing it. It appears in their file folder, as it does in yours. You all have the ability to edit it at any time. Font formatting, sorting, multiple spreadsheets in a workbook, cell linking, it\'s all there.
Speed is entirely based upon your browser and computer. While it\'s not the fastest thing in the world with large amounts of data, it did load and open a document on my computer faster than Excel.
If I had the change to buy the already expensive Google stock, I\'d be picking it up right about now.
