Google challenges Microsoft Excel, to release Web-based spreadsheet

“Google plans to make available on Tuesday morning a test version of a Web-based spreadsheet program that is intended to make it simple to edit and share lists and numeric information online,” John Markoff reports for The New York Times. “The company said that the free program, called Google Spreadsheets, was still in the experimental stage, and that while it can read and create files in the format used by Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet program, it is not compatible with many of that program’s more powerful features.”

“At the same time, the Web search company appears to be moving ahead in its steady march toward creating its own computing universe that is an alternative to the desktop PC software business now dominated by Microsoft,” Markoff reports.

“Google executives said today that the program would make it possible for Internet users to upload two common spreadsheet and data formats, Excel and C.S.V. Once the data is on Google’s Web servers, it will be possible for two or more people to simultaneously edit spreadsheet documents and chat about them using Google’s instant messaging program,” Markoff reports. “The new service will be able to handle several hundred formulas used to manipulate data in Excel, but it will not handle more complex functions like Excel macros, said Jonathan Rochelle, the Google Spreadsheets product manager.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Take a bite here, a nip there, another nibble from over there, and soon enough not much will be left. Are the Dark Ages of Personal Computing finally beginning to crumble? Tomorrow’s forecast for Redmond, WA: 100% chance it’ll be raining chairs and expletives.

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Related article:
Chair hurling Microsoft CEO Ballmer: ‘I’m going to f—ing kill Google’ – September 03, 2005