1. What about it makes it an Excel killer? I could never see anybody in a real office setting using this over Excel. Maybe students, but they get Office for free or super cheap anyway.

And we already know OpenOffice is free and hasn't made any noticeable dent in MS Office's user base.

Put Google's logo on it, stamp it with AJAX love, and suddenly it's an Office killer? I don't see the logic.

If you're right then Google should make a web-based MP3 player with lots of AJAX and it will be the sure-fire iPod killer. Watch out Mr. Jobs, you could be next!

Posted at 9:07PM on Jun 6th 2006 by Dylan Greene

2. Jason,

These apps (and I use a lot of them) aren't "killing" anything. Is GTalk taking down AIM, GMail, Hotmail? Er, I think not.

Posted at 10:11PM on Jun 6th 2006 by Narendra

3. This isn't anything close to an "Excel Killer". It's just a cool little tinker toy for me to point around at for a few minutes then look back at it months later and wonder why I never used it.

Posted at 11:35PM on Jun 6th 2006 by Don Wilson

4. I think the real MS Office Killer is the fact that MS Office comes with the PC you buy. Does any end consumer actually buy MS Office? I don't think so, it comes with the computer.

There are TWO really big issues here no one has discussed: IBM and Outsourcing.

#1 IBM has a groupware product (Notes is what I think it is called) and several OSs (including OS/2) far superior to anything coming from Google. And, IBM could have deployed its internet-based MS Office/OS Killer a long time ago. So, why didn't/hasn't IBM deployed its internet-based Office Suite /OS free to the public? I think the answer to this lies in the FACT that IBM and ALL Consultants make a lot of money BECAUSE MS Windows is flawed. I'm not trying to imply anything evil about IBM et. al. But, the fact that Microsoft has made its idiot and flawed software as ubiquitous as dog-sheat, has created an industry of consultants who are making a good living making Windows and MS Office actually work. I recall reading that IBM decided to not support OS/2 because it realized it could make more money fixing MS Windows'problems for customers.

#2 the outsourcing factor. It is possible that the purpose of an internet-base Office Suite may NOT be for US Businesses to actually use the Suite instead of MS Office. It is possible that the purpose of an internet-based Office Suite and OS is to serve as a common/opensource/free platform on which workers offshore can interact/interface with their US clients. Wouldn't a huge expense disappear for offshore workers if they didn't have to buy individual computers with MS Windows and MS Office?

Imagine uploading megabytes of data to Google Spreadsheet, going out for coffee and then coming back and the formatting and presention work has all been done by someone in India? I know that Outsourcer Office Tiger (and others) is trying to get Investment Banks to outsource more of the work that new hire analysts do to India (most of which is in excel as I recall). I think they have also been trying to get more accounting work outsourced to India, work which is also mostly in Excel.

Ummm, didn't I read something about IBM tripling its investment in India? Does anybody know if Google Spreadsheet is compatible with IBM Notes? I'm just saying ... I mean, at some point all this talk about Google and Office Suites and OSes has to consider the fact that IBM already has all of this stuff.

Posted at 4:48AM on Jun 7th 2006 by Marion Paige

5. The only thing Google is "killing" are small ISV's who are actually trying to create compelling alternatives to big, heavy, desktop-bound software. If you were an ISV, would you launch an online spreadsheet now? Think you'd get anything resembling notice or coverage, even if you had something really different and useful to offer?

For the next cycle of migration to the cloud, software will have to work both on- and off-line. Most people can not count on ubiquitous access and have legitimate concerns about security, privacy, and accessibility. Microsoft will inevitably find a way to address this from their Office suite outward. Google and other "cloud companies" will have to find a way to solve this by synchronizing to something on the desktop... like Office.

Google has shown that this is their strategy with Gmail and now with Spreadsheets. They're providing an online utility to complement Office, not a "killer" alternative.

That Google, a company that lives and dies on search and context could ship an online spreadsheet without any search capability is a sign of how far from being a "killer" of anything Google is. The collaboration and chat features are interesting and may prove useful for some people. But how seriously can a product from a search company be that doesn't allow you to perform a search against your data?

Google is a dabbler, not a killer. They're just throwing chum in the water.

Posted at 7:07AM on Jun 7th 2006 by Marc Orchant

6. Perhaps Google could use this killer-app to calculate the future impact of their loss of focus.

Posted at 9:46AM on Jun 7th 2006 by Jeff

7. light os? maybe more than that, I know google has been hiring former palm source os developers with experience in hard core portable unix programming, there was a flood of american programmers leaving palm source right after they got bought, apparently some weren't to happy with the new owners...

Posted at 10:16AM on Jun 7th 2006 by Mike Schleifstein

8. Just got my invite. Uploaded a spreadsheet of household projects, invited my wife to be able to edit it. This is a killer app. Not the spreadsheet part of it, but the ability to share and collaboratively edit documents without having to setup a household network and worry about versioning.

Very exciting stuff.

Posted at 12:39PM on Jun 7th 2006 by Craig

9. Is Microsoft Losing its Network Effect?

"People used to have to buy Windows machines because that was what you needed to run MS Office and most other software. But people aren't building applications on the Windows any more; they are building them on the web."

http://www.innovationcreators.com/2006/06/microsoft_is_losing_the_networ.html

Posted at 3:35PM on Jun 7th 2006 by Dimitar Vesselinov