You might want to have a look at Zoho Sheet, an online spreadsheet service which supports collaboration, charting and more.

Sign up for free at http://zohosheet.com

Regards,
Ramesh

http://os.newsforge.com/os/06/02/22/2221258.shtml
http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=WD+Passport

And still permits Google use if you want it, like any OS.

Almost Certainly.

The Google spreadsheet that is being launched tomorrow will rightly scare the pants off of any business exec.

When Google releases an enterprise Google office server that can Drastically reduce the cost of business operations (think install, configure, maintain and support costs for client side software), big business will come running. Client side apps will be reserved for the power users.

Oh yeah, be carefull thinking of google as an “advertising business”. It is true that contextual advertising is their biggest revenue stream, but it isn’t their only business model.

Maybe the essence of spreadseeting is not about poetic creativity Anyway, what many people love about Google product is that they are quite powerful while staying extremely simple to use; a simple, predictible name lets expect a simple, predictible behavior. That’s what most of people look for.

You’re right, but that IS their business and it is NOT Google’s. Microsoft directly makes money by the products they sell to manage information. If they don’t do that job, they lose business. Google directly makes money by selling advertising. If they lose your data, oops, that doesn’t affect their business model. See what I’m saying?

Show me where in the Microsoft EULA they guarantee ANY of your data. I thought not.

They don’t even guarantee that their products will work properly.

But for companies that want to at least have their data on their own premises, there is that nice Google pizza box that can be loaded up with any Google functionality you wish to have. Do I expect large companies to load all their sensitive data up to Google servers next week? No. But the average home user will no longer have the need to buy even the down-priced educational edition of Office, and small businesses will be able to start using this right away as an alternative to having their own server farm.

The corporate-form of Gmail (which I’m already testing) along with the calendar function, Writely, and now this, pretty much eliminate the need for Office (or even a corporate server) for 99 percent of the worlds businesses. If the Fortune 500 can only function with Office, fine, MS can have them. MS will find themselves quickly priced out of the mainstream market in the same way that the big mainframe vendors did in the 80s. As will all technology that has matured (and spreadsheets are so mature they are on social security) prices have to come WAY down of the product just plain given away to keep market share up. Handwriting has been on the wall on this for years. MS has just been looking away, throwing chairs, etc.

But Google has been known to move quickly. Of course they won’t guarantee anything. Just like gmail has been in eternal beta, so will this product.

But once they gain confidence, licensing agreements may change…

1) No large business is going to trust their data to Google. Google’s in the advertising business, not the data management business. Read the licensing agreements, they don’t guarantee ANY of your data. Imagine asking a company if they’d trust Leo Burnett with all of their corporate documents. Exactly, it’s an absurd notion.

2) Are you telling me that non-Internet corporations are willing to let their lifeblood hang in the balance of their firewall, their internet connection, and the reliability of Google’s servers? Never.

3) Feature wise, I’m sure it won’t hold a candle to Microsoft for a long, long time.

4) The dreaded T-word: Training. This puts fear into the eyes of any dimwitted idiot working for a corporation and barely knows how to dial a phone. If our companies need to provide training for Word and Office now, god forbid training needs to be redone.

5) Did I mention that no one would trust their data to Google?

Security will be a lot better on Google servers than it has been with everyone carrying data home on laptops. Since the “PC revolution” has been in full swing I don’t think there is a secure piece of data in the world, especially with everyone running Windows.

But maybe the pendulum will swing in the other direction now so that (as we did in the 60s) critical data will reside on secure networks, and you will only see as much of the data as you need to get your job done, rather than as happened recently, someone to the entire Veterans administration data on discharged veterans home on a laptop (which got stolen). I had an old guy call me in a panic asking me if he thought he should have his name changed. I’d hate to be the guy that lost that laptop and meet my old pal face to face. He’d never touch a laptop again.