As many of you already know, Google announced a limited beta of their new online web based spreadsheets program yesterday called simply “Google Spreadsheets”. There’s nothing particularly fancy about the online spreadsheet application but if you don’t need the fancy features found in Excel, this actually might fit the bill for ya. Google Spreadsheets works by connecting to your Google account. You can save your spreadsheet files online or onto your computer. Of course if you save it with Google – you’ll never lose it unless Google loses it of course. That’s particularly nice if you want to work on a simple spreadsheet at home or away – making something like your budget per se?

So.. will this threaten Excel? Absolutely not in my opinion but it does put Microsoft on notice. From a commercial perspective, Google Spreadsheets will never take hold simply b/c no business would rightly place their information on a Google server. However, from a consumer perspective, it could be a nice application to use IF they add in additional features such as charts and graphs. What’s important to note here is that Google is saying “we can make software too”.. or at least we can buy companies that make software. It’s doubtful that Google will take away real business from Microsoft or any other vendor but they are out there to offer alternative solutions to customers which is always good. If anything, this move pushes Microsoft to become more innovative. It’s good to keep companies on their heels I tell you!

Finally, it’ll be interesting to see if Google ends up charging money for all of these free services that they offer. It is true that Google has plenty of money in the bank – but it’s also true that they make most of their money from online advertising. At some point in time, Google will have to diversify their earnings a bit so where does that additional revenue come from? Perhaps premium services down the road???

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