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Hands on: Google Spreadsheets
feminazi writes "Google spreadsheets are more powerful than you might think, according to Richard Ericson. The free, Web-based service doesn't currently offer encryption, but the clean interface has standard drop-down menus, icons and buttons (just when MS is switching to "ribbons"). You can use it to work with existing files and "Formatting is simple, direct and fast. ... Sort, does precisely what you'd expect." Most importantly, it has most of Excel's functions -- including some that aren't listed or documented." We covered the launch of this program last week.
The key to this being an "Excel Killer" is not that it needs to be able to do everything (or even most) of what Excel can do. Most people barely use probably 2% of Excel's capabilities, and don't even know how to use much of the other 98%.
The key to putting some hurt onto Excel sales, and MS Office in general is for Google to offer things like this that are "good enough" for the mass of home users that use 2% of Excel's product offerings. I personally have started using this for a couple personal spreadsheets that I have, where the network availability is more useful than having the whiz-bang Excel features.
Let's not forget that Google has also purchased Writely, which may be a "good enough" web based word processor to start attracting the mass of people who use Word as a fancy notepad.exe with spell-check. I don't need a heavy duty Word processor for most of what I do, and many other home users don't either. Writely is not yet available for users to register, unless they got in pre-Google.
While the Writely and Google Spreadsheets combo are not "killer apps" in terms of features, they may have enough functionality to put a serious dent in the very low end of Microsoft's user base.
Soccer Goal Plans
What about when Sears created the Discover card (which is now its own company and Sears' future looks gloomy) or when the Wright brothers built a flying machine in their bicycle shop. It's a fundamental of business -- change is fact: you can either be part of it or watch it happen. Google is simply applying their resources to expand the productivity they offer the average user. I like it.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Although not their original business model, selling contextual ads has by far been their most succesful. In that sense, this new app supports that objective nicely.
Google's doing this in a rather smart way, IMHO...
They're not chasing Excel's market. Nobody's going to be using this for business-critical applications, and this won't challenge the corporate market for Office. What Google is doing is chasing the long tail of the market - the people who might want to use a spreadsheet, but have no need for Excel. Let's face it, for a quick and dirty budget, a team roster, or a simple document, Excel is more than overkill.
What Google Spreadsheets has that Excel doesn't is simple collaboration -- no need to install SharePoint servers or any of that other Microsoft lock-in garbage required. Just add a few emails to a field and you're done. That is ideal for a whole host of simple, small projects. Say you're running a small business and want to have online schedules -- would you use Excel and some expensive Microsoft server setup, or just make a simple spreadsheet with Google and share it amongst your employees? It seems pretty easy to guess which one is the easiest and least painful option to someone without an IT budget.
Google knows that if they try to compete with Office, they'll get crushed. So they're not doing that at all. Google Spreadsheets isn't an enterprise app, it's a quick and dirty system for simple tasks -- and it excels at being what it is. By capturing that long tail of users who don't need Excels features and won't pay Excel's price, Google can pick up a sizeable user base. The real question is what Google intends to do with those users and how they'll turn this into a revenue generator.
It's a fundamental of business -- change is fact: you can either be part of it or watch it happen.
Not necessarily; for 37 years, the WD40 company produced exactly one product (I'll leave figuring out what they make as an exercise to the reader).
There's a difference between change necessary to adapt to a changing marketplace, and change simply for the sake of change.
No because Google has money has the money to waste. Not all the employees can be focused on search and advertising. Belive me, they have enough resources on search and advertising to not be dropping the golden ball. ... unless you have Google stock.
Anyways, if they do drop the ball, somebody else will be happy to replace them. No worries there either
Google provides a services which is somewhat hard to do well (search). It makes money by selling ads (mainly) and services around what it does well (search). The more content there is, the harder it will be for google to have competition that will be able to sprout up, due to data glut.
Remove the expensive cost of content tools, and more people can create more content, which they will WANT to search through. At the same time, remove your supposed competitors major source of revenue by fulfilling a need it would not, software that works, is light weight, and is free/cheap (good enough). This isn't just a smart move, it's about a shift in technology to provide people what they want and moving them toward benefiting your business model (designed to make money around what people want).
Want to see another point you may have missed? (major speculation) Telco's limit content in a tiered system, google buys a little more dark fiber and lights it up. Starts a local isp business through techies who don't want a tiered net, and act as partners in a 'mashup' of reselling google network access. Us local techies not liking telco or nsa habits of late, serve as local wifi resellers via mesh networks to solve the 'last mile' problem. All the time, solving our consumer problems and generating ad revenue for google.
Google has smart people doing smart things solving real problems with simple and very obvious solutions. No, I don't work for google, but if their looking... grin.
Anybody nervous that Google may be letting their eye off the ball (their original business model) by going off on these tangential projects?
No, most people are psyched about it. Long term R&D is something that is hardly encouraged anymore due to quarterly earnings pressure (*cough* HP *cough). Google, on the other hand, actually schedules programmers to work on side projects of their own design. They hire very smart people to think up the Next Big Thing so that they can exploit it. Contrast this with Microsoft expansion policy: throw massive amounts of cash at heavily entrenched markets, then fail to generate any profit. I much prefer Google's method to Microsoft's "send more men over the top" WW1-style attrition.