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Google Launches Online Spreadsheet System
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jun 06, 2006 07:51 AM
from the oh-it's-on-now dept.
from the oh-it's-on-now dept.
Accommodate Students writes "In a move that is sure to cause even more discussion of Google's intentions to go head-to-head with Microsoft in the Office Suite arena, they have launched a spreadsheet. AP is reporting this as 'Google further invades its rival's territory.' You can share spreadsheets with other users and can chat while you're editing -- multiplayer spreadsheets! It can read both CSV and XLS formats." More from the article: "Google is targeting Office, which generated $2.95 billion in sales and $2.09 billion in profit in Microsoft's third quarter ended March 31. Microsoft plans a new release this year and is trying to get Office into more consumers' hands at a cheaper price while persuading businesses to buy higher-priced versions."
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Hardware: Errors in Spreadsheets are Pandemic 322 comments
G Roper writes "Studies show that most spreadsheets have critical errors in one percent of their cells, well beyond a permissible level. Here are some news stories about spreadsheet errors. Spreadsheets won't protect a firm from liability when they are audited and spreadsheet errors found: spreadsheets are not secure, provide no audit trail and won't pass HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley auditing. How are Slashdotters coping with the proliferation of spreadsheets in the face of greater legal accountability and auditing?"
Offsite: MercuryNews Coverage
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Offsite: Register Coverage
Offsite: C|Net Coverage
[+]
Hands on: Google Spreadsheets 257 comments
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.
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Next Up: A Google WebOS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Go to Google, check your Gmail (stored in your user space), bring up saved searches, research with Google scholar, manage your saved Google webpages, edit your Google spreadsheets (stored in your user space), edit your Google blog in a file directory using Google Word, veiw your map locations in saved tabs of Google maps, start up Google Talk to chat with your friends, manage your finances with Google Finance, etc. I mean, it doesn't take much imagination to see how this would work. Other WebOS's out there try to do things like this but lack the applications and userspace/stability. I'd expect GoogleOS to give you 5~10GB worth of space and work through any browser.
This article is trying to get accross the point that Google is targeting MS Office but in my opinion I think that Google is targeting MS Windows and fleshing out their applications suites before they push for launching a user space or OS type web project. Perhaps all you'll need pretty soon to be productive is a machine with Linux installed & merely a good web browser?
AJAX is the key (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, despite what Google claims (and their fanboys regurgitate), Google is an evil company whose primary objective
Re:AJAX is the key (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll just have to make sure that Google allows for adequate privacy; although with the normally sensitive information stored in spreadsheets, I'd be surprised if they didn't.
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Conversion (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a fish: (*) What if there were a tool that would, say, convert CSV to XLS format? Knowing that a huge number of translators are available, I took a guess and googled:
and first on the list was:Learn how to fish: In general, "There's got to be a better way" is a flag which tells me:
So, this problem was an instance of the general case of looking for a tool that converts from one extension to another. ps2pdf, pdf2txt,
Even if I don't find an all-inclusive solution to my problem, I often find other supporting tools that make my life easier. Further, I can then often use those tools / techniques to simplify things to the point where I CAN solve the problem.
(*) Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. [bartleby.com] - Chinese Proverb
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Re:Conversion (Score:4, Funny)
(*) Build a man a fire, keep him warm for the night. Catch a man on fire, keep him warm for the rest of his life.
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Re:AJAX is the key (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't have two competing monopolies - it's no longer a monopoly once you have 2. That's kind of what the "mono" in "monopoly" implies. And I'd argue that having two companies, even if they are both evil, competing is WAY better than having one monolothic company with a strangelhold on the market. It's the difference between a monopoly (worst possible scenario) and an oligopoly. As long as you can rule out collusion it's going to be good for consumers. Not as good as lots of smaller, agile, innovating companies - but still a step in the right direction.
As for the whole "Google is evil" thing; I don't see where that comes from. You write: Google is an evil company whose primary objective is to use everyone elses content to generate revenue (hmmm, they launch this service today, coincidence?) As far as I can tell your implication is that Google is somehow parasitic in that they don't actually make content themselves, but they do profit from the content that others make.
I fail to see how this really makes sense. This may be a shock to you, but there's more to the internet than just content. It's kind of like the difference between a product and a service: both can be valuable. How much worth would wikipedia be if all the content was there but instead of being divided into articles and searchable it was one long series of images (so that you couldn't even search for text via a text editor). It's the exact same info, but without the capacity to easily access that info it's not nearly as valuable.
So if Google wants to make it's money by making the information on the web more accessible (and ulimately expanding to making other information e.g. scholarly articles, every book ever written, satellite photos of the earth, maps, etc.) then they deserve to make money from it. Accessibility IS valuable. So what is your issue?
I'm not saying they have never done anything wrong or that they are perfect. They're record with China is morally ambigous at best and they're complicit with the opression of a large chunk of the world's population at worst. Just that I don't have any issues with their core business philosophy. They're even making advertising more relevant and less intrusive. How is this a bad thing?
-stormin
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Re:AJAX is the key (Score:5, Interesting)
The very fact that there's an "old adage" should rule out the possibility that Google is actually trying to deceive anyone. It IS free (as in beer) because you pay $0.
There is a price on these services, and it looks to me like the heart of the Google business model is amassing an enormous database of personal information about all of the users of their services, and selectively selling bits to advertisers (perhaps indirectly, eg by targeting advertisements for their customers).
Here's the thing. If you have an issue with this price (and I admit that it is a price): don't use Google. The fact is that at least you now have a CHOICE between privacy issues and MS tax. Sure, you say, two bad choices aren't that great. But we're talking about paying for a service here, so of course you're not going to like paying for it. No one actually likes paying for electricity either, but the fact is that now people who use to have only 1 viable choice now have 2 viable choices.
And the Google choice is viable. I think you're misusing the phrase "personal information". I don't mind if Google has a scanner reading every damn email I ever write. I'm totally fine with that - as long as I feel that my privacy is going to be protected. If an algorithm reads my email and I get an advertisement for product X as a result I'm FINE with that. It's at worst amusing and at best helpful. As long as information isn't linked to me personally, I think the exchange with Google is mutually beneficial. As long as the numbers are significantly large there's no possibility of me being identified by the data they collect, and so not only do I not mind if they collect, I think it's great that they do. If producers can do a better job of making products that actually interest me, and if I get advertisements for things I actually care about - how is this bad?
Some people are insane about their digital privacy online, but some people are also insane about their privacy in the real world and like to live in shacks in the mountains with no running water (and possibly wear tin hats). If that's your thing: then great. But the rest of us think that GMail, etc. are a really good deal.
Final comment: I don't think the Google price is hidden. If you never notice that, for example, the ads you see on Gmail correspond to the subject matter of your email than you just don't care enough to be bothered one way or the other. Besides that, they actually do a good job of explaining their licensing agreements in plain English. There's no secrecy that I can see - it's just that most people don't care enough about the kind of extreme privacy concerns you have for anyone to be making a big fuss of this.
-stormin
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Re:AJAX is the key (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if that's your criterion for evil may I suggest you stay far away from Slashdot, Yahoo, digg, reddit, flickr, delicious, craigslist, ebay, online bookstores, all usenet providers, news sites, weather sites, forum websites, every commercial search engine in existance, and let's not forget ISPs themselves.
In fact, to keep a safe distance from all this evil, it's probably just safer if you never go online again. None of us would complain.
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Re:Next Up: A Google WebOS? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Next Up: A Google WebOS? (Score:5, Informative)
Google Maps is a sad joke, outside of the US at least. The problem is completely inaccurate map data. Here's an example, a link to a spot in Osaka, Japan [google.com]. A visually distinct intersection, in fact. Click between "Satellite" and "Map", and notice how the intersection - and all other map data - shifts about 20 meters or so.
The issue is that they bought mapping data (the same government data all the other Japanese map services use) and just plonked it in, without correcting for the fact that Japan (like almost every other territory) uses its own, locally corrected projection, and the data needs to be adjusted for this if it is to fit with the satellite data (or the WGS84 projection used for Google maps in general). I bug reported this over a year ago - I'm sure many people did - and the only thing that seems to have happened is that the hybrid view is now disabled.
A map service that will send you to the wrong block in a congested city because of an elementary omission like this is not exactly a feather in any organizational cap.
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Re:Next Up: A Google WebOS? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're omitting something: broadband.
There are a lot of people out there with computers and only crappy/no connections.
However, it's worth pointing out (as I'm sure Google has recognized), the VALUE of the non-connected market, in terms of productivity software, is not so great. Maybe Google simply concedes this to MS?
(FWIW I agree with your extrapolation.)
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Re:Next Up: A Google WebOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
You will probably be able to do your work locally with your browser since it is possible for AJAX application to delay data sending. Therefore it shouldn't be a problem for Spreadsheet or Word like application.
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Main Market (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand what you mean, but this is precisely what is laudable about this service. I just finished a degree that took me 10 years -- during which I lived as a poor college bum. I am very much in favor of a service like this that students can use for free, legally from any computer lab, for any physics/chemistry/etc. experiments. I personally don't care if my homework is moderately secure or heavily secure. I know lots of students who don't use spreadsheets when they could and should, preferring a word processor to arrange data they calculated manually.
The point? It is one thing to create a product designed to fill the need of the main market. It's another thing to be just a little off-center such that you are a force causing the expansion of the market. If more college students start using this for their data, then the user-base of the "spreadsheet technology" increases. I don't care about this from a business standpoint, particularly, but I do care that more people will be using tools more appropriate to their tasks, and everything will improve by a degree each time that happens.
Students aren't the only group who ought to be using spreadsheets but aren't, either. Little League scheduling, minor family finance ("Which grocery store is more economical? Let's record our receipts for a month from each and find out"), and many, many others.
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Re:Main Market (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is specifically that there is some data that doesn't need to be secured. Who cares if someone breaks in and steals access to my science homework? It's not that valuable. When I'm doing genuine original research, then I'll pay enough money to secure it on a local machine. But when I'm doing the lab experiment on page 194 of the standard workbook for this semester's textbook, who cares? In the worst case scenario, a cheater breaks in and uses my data for his grade. To protect against that, having a password-protected account on a server is sufficient to protect me from charges of dishonesty.
So what, then? Is it the little league schedule that you want to generate then print and distribute on paper? Uh-oh! Someone might find out when the Fighting Pandas are playing the Twirling Tweeties -- before the release date!
Which grocery store is less expensive? CRAP! Now my $75/month advantage over my neighbors is shot! Dang, and I was hoping to be the lucky winner of natural selection on this one, and pass on my genes more frequently based on my superior shopping abilities.
How in the world does "homework and little league schedules" get interpreted "business documents and credit card (personal) info?" Question -- is there any data that doesn't need to be secured? Should I secure my name? I guess I should encrypt my business card, so that I can distribute it freely, but only people with the secret decoder ring can figure out what it says. Also, I should protect my business's phone number and web URL. It would be TERRIBLE if someone found out what those were without my explicit invitation.
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Re:Next Up: A Google WebOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
No argument. But for those folks, don't forget they can always package it up and put it into a "server appliance" that is under the control of the business; on their Intranet.
I have one of their "Google Mini" appliances. It is a $2000 (and up) server that crawls our Intranet and provides local (and secure) search functions of our Bugzilla, internal wiki, mailman archives, etc. It took me about an hour to unpack it, RTFM, rack it and get it booted up. Another hour to get to the point it was serving search data. It has gotten rave reviews from our users, and I think I have spent less than 1-man day total setting it up and maintaining it (mostly customizing the interface, etc.).
http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/ [google.com]
I think it is highly likely they will extend this model to deal with this issue. Not sure what they would charge, but it would not be hard to price it in a way that makes them a lot of money, and makes it very easy for my company to justify buying it. I am hoping the next step (probably before all the Office apps) is to get Gmail available in a server like this.
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Then let's fix the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
>Only if you don't mind having no privacy and always need a working Internet connection to do any work.
I hear what you are saying. But I think its just a matter of time before someone just up and solves the problem. What if all of your data stored online were encrypted with a private key--one which your service provider does not hold in escrow? As long as your connection is encrypted, and the "static" store is encrypted--that's fairly private, wouldn't you say?
I think your second point is a non-issue, or its getting there. I got a Sprint PPC-6700 recently (WinMo 5 PDA/phone, fast EVDO data line) and its gotten me quite used to always having the net available pretty much anywhere. Yes, a fall-back is a good thing, but how many dumb users run regular backups? Same number won't care about an offline copy.
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This is not invading MS territory. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is expanding into a new market area before MS gets there (whatever did happen to office live anyway?)
Re:This is not invading MS territory. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is not invading MS territory. (Score:5, Interesting)
[there is some crossover, but] All the people paying for office are businesses - they can't afford their office to be down (through network problems or google problems).
For home users who want to knock up a quick spreadsheet, sure! But they weren't buying excel were they? They were copying their brother's office, using whatever free office suite came on their computer or whatever.
This is not going to enroach on Office's current userbase, just stop MS expanding into the online office space.
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Re:This is not invading MS territory. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:This is not invading MS territory. (Score:5, Insightful)
Watch me slip towards giving Google all my information: as a personal example, I know it'd be handy for keeping a record of my yearly finances, for which full blown Excel is frankly overkill. I have to say, as a first application, they did well to pick a spreadsheet.
Specifically, this would be a boon for OS X users since Apple's current offerings in iWork (Pages and Keynote), do not extend to a spreadsheet program.
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Bad Example (Score:5, Interesting)
That is exactly why I want a full-blown Excel. Do you really want to do your finances online? Have a copy of that residing on google's server where it is stored or "cached"? They put out these services to aggregate your life, to advertize to you. You are there to make money, that's all they care about. Your privacy be damned.
If you want to make that information public then by all means do. But programs like Excel and Quicken are there to keep finances private. That's a good thing.
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Re:This is not invading MS territory. (Score:4, Interesting)
But that is missing the point. The people at Google are not idiots and they understand that large enterprises, the bread and butter of MS Office, are not going to switch over to Google spreadsheet. They are going for a different market--one that MS has not served well. I think that market has two prongs: first, small businesses--I mean, three or four people--who do not have an IT department. They don't have full time geeks to manage computers, and they don't have sales reps paying them personal calls. These small businesses might see great value in what Google offers: a no-charge spreadsheet that doesn't need to be maintained. Compare that to Office, with its patches and high license fees. And it'll be easy for coworkers to collaborate too.
Google is already going for this market with the Gmail for you domain feature. "But big companies aren't going to switch from Exchange for that," people said. True but, again, missing the point. Tiny businesses aren't running Exchange, but they still want professional-looking email addresses. Gmail for your domain does that, without the hassle or the full-time geeks.
The other prong for Google spreadsheet is collaboration. Office does not do this very well. With Google spreadsheet it will be easy for people worldwide to work together on something, or for one person to access the same simple spreadsheet no matter what computer he is using.
The press is conflict-hungry. Google v. MS, they like to say. But Google is not so stupid as to try to compete directly with MS Office. They are going for a whole new market here that MS has not served well: the small business.
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Google doesn't need a Desktop Office application. (Score:4, Insightful)
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This means... (Score:5, Funny)
stupidslashdot page filler needed here. oh how I hate that.
The Real Strategy (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the real strategy is to force MS to consider interop. If Google signs up lots vocal consumers who use Office97 file format for data exchange, then MS cant abandon that format that easily. That would keep OpenOffice etc viable.
Fact is substantial portion of the profit of MS comes from Office. Substantial portion of their user base sticks to MS Office solely for compatibility with their business partners. When was the last time any one you saw a feature in MS Office that is a "must have" and "upgrade at any cost"? The 10 to 15% of the market share for FireFox is enough to force most of the webservers to change their coding practices to some standard rather than whatever MS is dishing out. Similarly 10 to 15% of the users using Office97 file formats routinely would be enough to force MS to keep supporting it till real alternatives develop.
Re:The Real Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
BS.
Microsoft does not break backwards compatibility on every release. The day Microsoft breaks backwards-compatibility is the day millions of businesses decide not to upgrade. This is not what Microsoft wants. Which is why the next Office will continue to support the old binary file formats perfectly alongside the new XML formats.
How well does it work in practice? Pretty damn well. Just this weekend I took a spreadsheet written and saved in Excel XP, opened it in Excel 97, wrote a complex macro, saved it again, emailed it back to the guy with Excel XP, and my macro worked perfectly for him first time. If Microsoft kept breaking the file format and macro language the way you claim, clearly that would not have been possible.
Please, if you want to criticise Microsoft, pick on a criticism that's actually true, like their unfair business practices, their laughable security record, or (clutches at straws) their ugly GUI or something. But don't criticise their compatibility record -- because it's among the best in the industry. (Not that that's saying much.)
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Re:The Real Strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
So if I build a product that I want to interoperate with Excel, and it uses the 1997 format, I'm okay for a while. But in the next release of Excel, by default it's going to produce documents that my application cannot read. Every time somebody sends me one, I'm going to have to reply back and ask them to do a "Save As" and give it to me in Excel-97 instead of Excel-xx, where xx is this year's flavor. In short, it's not backwards compatibility of Microsoft products that's in question at all, it's the "forwards compatibility" of other products which have to be compatible with MS' latest offerings in order to remain competitive, because of its dominance in the market.
Thus anyone who wants to make a seamlessly interoperable product has to expend a ridiculous amount of energy and manpower, constantly reverse-engineering Microsoft's latest formats. The work required to change the format is asymmetrical: on Microsoft's end (where they have all the specifications) it's quite simple, but on the receiving end it's quite difficult.
So what the GP was saying, I think, is that by creating a large installed base of users who can only read Excel-97, it might give Microsoft some impetus to not change the default format every time the mood hits them.
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Excel file formats (Score:5, Informative)
I assume you're referring to Excel-97, which is used in various flavors from Excel 97 up to Excel 2002. This is a stretch to call a single format, since using some features in newer versions will create problems or at least inconsistencies when they are opened in other versions. Create a PivotTable in 2002 and then open it in 97, for example. This is the reason for the whole "compatibility check" that happens whenever you try to save a document in an older format than the latest one. Even 2000 and 2002 have things that will get lost in translation.
If I want to use Excel 97, I run the risk of "mangling" documents that I work on which come from people using newer versions ("what did you do with my PivotTables?!"); with each new version of Excel, features are included that break complete interoperability with past versions, even though they claim to use the same "format." The format might be good for data interchange in the roughest sense, but it doesn't preserve a complete workflow. Thus, any application claiming "Excel compatibility" must constantly update itself with the latest reverse-engineered updates, if it wants to be a viable alternative.
References:
Excel File Compatibility [smartcomputing.com]
How to recognize the difference among Excel 97 files, Excel 2000 files, and Excel 2002 files [microsoft.com]
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Imagine the google adds... (Score:3, Funny)
Adds for stuff like financial planing, calculators, MS Office and of course WoW gold.
Writely? (Score:3, Interesting)
ODF (Score:5, Interesting)
MS Works? (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted it's a complete and total POS, but isn't that what MS Works is supposed to be doing already?
Mark territory... (Score:3, Funny)
Let's play rules in the wild..... I will be impressed when someone from Google dares creep onto MS property and take a piss on the front door just when everyone is leaving for lunch. For me, that will be when the dynamics get interesting.
Snazzier than wikicalc (Score:5, Informative)
Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, I personaly think that a word processor would be more useful, but this is a good start on it. I can't wait to try it out, google has always been very good at releaseing good products, and that is why I like them. I'v learned a lot trying to imitate some of the things they do (to incorp ideas, such as the rich text box into my website, I know they existed before, but all I saw were buggy ones until gmail....)
Flight sim? (Score:5, Funny)
as the MIT $100 laptop (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:as the MIT $100 laptop (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, for all those rural Africans using broadband.
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And all the while Microsoft is saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And all the while Microsoft is saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that Google is moving slowly, incrementally, and always testing the waters with each new product (hence their perpetual beta status). This is the right way to do it, since they don't over-comit to any particular project. They always have their bread-and-butter operation (web search ads) to keep them running, so whenever one of these new ideas takes off, it simply increases their earnings.
Some people think that one day Google will unveil a super-duper WebOS or GoogleOS or something. Instead I think it will be a slow process, where more and more functionality will be included in the "online google suite." I don't think they will ever fully dominate... nor should that be their goal. They can make alot of money by providing a useful set of services. This set of services need not be complete for it to be profitable.
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The Web Browser Is the UI for Google's WebOS (Score:4, Insightful)
and this is how... (Score:5, Funny)
Existing Online Spreadsheet Applications (Score:5, Interesting)
EditGrid [editgrid.com] has been out there for two months, and has cool features such as gnumeric import support (we actually use the core library of Gnumeric as our backend, and therefore support all functions that gnumeric supports), and additional stuff like automatic updated stock price data [editgrid.com] in a spreadsheet.
[ Disclaimer: I am currently working as a developer of EditGrid [editgrid.com], see my "homepage" URL ]
Basic use, really (Score:5, Informative)
Support for CSV and XLS only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, CSV is much simpler than any XML format, but for that exact same reason, you can only store static data in a CSV (unless your static data happens to be formulae that can be executed by your spreadsheet program).
CSV == Comma Separated Value (Score:4, Funny)
that,looks,like,this,and,
each,comma,delimits,a,column.
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Re:Who in their right mind would use this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Yawn! (Score:5, Informative)
Gmail is intended as a free service, because there's already paid services out there, and Gmail is free because Google is free. Nothing Google has introduced costs the user anything, nor does it look like it ever will. Their money comes from investors and advertisers. If you want to pay, there's tens of other options out there, probably hundreds. You get more features by ASKING for them - send an email from their request page rather than sitting on your ass and moaning that it's not yet tailored to your every whim. Ditching the ads is the work of seconds with any decent browser. If you feel stuck with a gmail address, you can set forwarding on, you can access it via OE, Mail.app or other clients; both of those get around your whine about ads - those ads which are paying for your Gmail account. If you insist on paying for an ad-free email account, there's a shitload of ISPs who will happily sell it to you.
If you don't like Google, then don't stick with Google. If you stick with Google, then stop whining and DO something about the features you want. It's why that "New Features!" link turns up at the top of your Gmail interface occasionally. If you only joined Google in the first place to join the hip/trendy wave of that moment, then get out and go back to whatever you were using before. The interface is far better than that of the main free-email providers before, Yahoo!Mail and Hotmail; the ads are less obtrusive/intrusive/etc and attempt to be topical to the email rather than being the random flashy graphical banner ads that the other free-email providers blast around the place.
Each of the major releases from Google (Search, email, maps) has been a kick in a slow moving market. Google arrived in the searching business with fast algorithms and lots of servers for caching data, rapidly outpacing its competitors. Its email arrived with a gig of free space where others offered 6 or 10MB, and is now up to 2.7G; hotmail and yahoo both responded with a similar gig of space for their users -- after Google started claiming huge market share. People vote with their feet. Google maps was a handy alternative to multimap or mapquest, it expanded rapidly by adding satellite data (satellite or hybrid map) across the world, allowing you to calculate best-travel-times between locations (not best distance - best travel time), and even offering up API so other people could do things with it. See Ononemap.com for a single example off the top of my head; done by a company I know, using a central mapping service and sticking data on it to make that data far more useful than it is in original form. Again, the other providers who were already in it were left behind by Google's efforts.
Smaller projects like newsgroups exist that don't add much more than an interface to services that already exist elsewhere. Doesn't quite fit in your 'wonderful new toys' listing, but even still they made it work. They made it work in every browser I've tried to use with every single one of their services after their beta stages; I can go on a PC, a mac, a linux box, on IE or netscape or safari or firefox or opera and it works. I don't know about smaller browsers, but almost every single service used to require its own client for an OS to interface. Now, anyone can just go to Google, with whatever they're using. That makes a windows user able to function from a linux box, or a mac user on a windows box. The functionality may seem simple, but it's there and it *works*.
And if you think they're spreading themselves thin, then you should look up how many people they're hiring and the skills you need to get in.
I don't know if you intended your post to be a troll, or flamebait, but it looks like either way you did a good job. Oh, and stop whining about yet more free stuff.
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Re:Instant Spreadsheeting (Score:5, Interesting)
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