Google drops spreadsheet A-bomb on Microsoft

This is no April fools joke people, Google has just pulled out the big guns in its war against Microsoft.

Google has talked for years about a vision of a world where all of our most necessary computer applications will be web friendly. At the core of this idea is the notion that our basic, and necessary software could be run on the internet, rather than our computer. The beauty of this idea is that our files would be instantly attainable from any PC, we could open, edit, and save them all from within our universal browser, and the software will be instantly updated every time there was an improvement, or just a simple tweak.

Although Microsoft would never state so publically, this idyllic vision is threatening to its way of thinking, and business model. Microsoft's presence today is largly based on its history of developing "the world's software". The company's public image, is based mostly on it's designing strong, feature rich productivity software (at a hefty price ~$600 for the entire Microsoft Office Suite).

Because Google never introduced a web product that particularly threatened any of Microsofts PC based applications, the software giant has largly avoided discussing the matter and has many times simply dismissed Google's efforts as incomplete and amatuerish.

Until today.

Today Google announced a beta release* of Google Spreadsheets, a basic spreadsheet tool, hosted online by Google. Google claims that Google Spreadsheets is the perfect way to share spreadsheets... emphasizing that you no longer have to send your spreadsheet to your group by email, and then save their revisions as a new file. Google will instead will simply allow you to share your web based spreadsheets with other Google users, who will be able to edit the spreadsheet and save it in real-time. Within seconds you can log-in, and see the same spreadsheet with its updates, running through your browser. You will even be able to edit the files simultaneously (try doing that in Microsoft Excel!?)

So today was G-day. The day Google charged onto the beaches of the Microsoft main-land. We should expect to see a lot of retaliation from Microsoft in the coming months, as they try to fight back the Google attack with newly announced features in their Microsoft Office product line. We may even see new Microsoft announcements regarding their web-strategy, in order to show they have a plan to take on Google on their turf -- the net.

*Google Spreadsheets is currently in a limited test beta phase, and is only open to a small number of users during this phase of testing. I don't have an account with access, so if someone wants to share screenshots and reviews, I'd like to see/ hear them.