Google Spreadsheets: Very Basic, Pretty Interesting

Dear Sir,

I Wish to download the spreadsheet, since i use excel more often in my work, i can compare the utilities of the new product, can u tell me who can i get the google spreadsheets

Well, I see that you offer an opportunity to get access to Google spreadsheet. I'd be happy to get it. How can I access Writely too?

Thanks a lot

Patrizia

google spreadsheets is an online web application. You can't download it! But if you want to download something try http://download.openoffice.org/index.html and download the latest version!

I tried out google spreadsheet the most basic thing thats missing with it is not being able to do a pull down of thing like say
=A1+6 in some cell and then just wanna pull it down intead of writing the same formula in all the cells.
The other things is no charts/graph plotting which makes it kinda cumbersome to use.

I would prefer having the utility to share graphs rather than share data since not a lot of people would be interested in raw numbers rather would appreciate more if these could be represented into some chart form.

rightly said chris..
google spreadsheets is a web app and is currently not open for general use(by that i mean all GMail users). u have to send a request to google to be able to start using it.
I think it is the same case with writely, though i don't know if i can login with my writely account or not??(long time since i used it).

God how dumb are some people, you cant download it and the link is right at the start of the first paragraph, are you smart enough to even be sitting in front of a computer FFS

Google just keeps on truckin with new fun stuff, Microsoft has plently to learn from these folks. Love the simplicity. Being in the 60's its cool to reduce the complexity of boxes squares and formulas.

CTRL-D works, Chris.

the only thing that i wanto know is how do these folks make money??
i mean everythings free.....
some of them do hav ads.... but do ads giv them so much of money???

Can't really see the point in a web-based spreadsheet at all, especially if it falls short in functionality. It's a gimmick.

Why not just use Excel?

And how secure is your data? Would you trust a web-based app with your company figures? I think not

I'm sure they're working on a corporate edition.

Google doesn't have to directly make money on apps which could be of interest to enforcement agencies.

If the IRS or other nations' taxing agencies can access the data--legally--it would give Google very powerful "friends" and perhaps even a very substantial tax break.

I've often wondered how much user data that Microsoft provides (again legally) to intelligence and enforcement agencies around the world.

Google spreadsheet does most basic spreadsheet functions more intuitively than Excel and has several great features as standard, especially the unformat button and the entering of test/formulas directly into the cell. Adding rows and colums one at a time could turn out to be a bit of a pain however.
Overall, for a first effort, BRILLIANT.

two words: totally overrated.

Google Spreadsheets looks like a product released in a hurry. It just doesn't go well with the company's image. What good a spreadsheet application is if you can't write a macros kind of code snippets. You don't need a spreadsheet todo + and -, even a calculator can do it for you.

As far as collarboration, with add ons, you can do in Excel too.

Response time to format/sort is slow.

But, my biggest concern is, spreadsheets normally contains very confidential numbers that no company would want to share with others. And Google is best known for literally saving each and every key stroke of all
users who uses it's products. Not sure how many corporates would go for this product even if it comes with more exciting features.

I think your sort of right, just use openoffice. It's better then excel and free.

Quote "I tried out google spreadsheet the most basic thing thats missing with it is not being able to do a pull down of thing like say
=A1+6 in some cell and then just wanna pull it down intead of writing the same formula in all the cells." Highlighting the cell containing the formula and then Copy/Paste does work for formulae. It is a relatively simple application, but I like it.

This is a beta release people (heck probably even alpha release) relax.
Open office is free if you want to d/l a program - knock yourself out.
This could be used for when you don't - or can't - d/l and install software and it is their first release.
Yes it is missing some functionality - but I would ass/u/me Google is reading the message boards, and other comments to improve the product.

Response time is slow? again it is not the production version

If you don't like it maybe you can write Google and ask for your money back you spent on it

Harry:
Thanks for the mention about Zoho Sheet. We are working to add more depth and polish to our offerings. We believe this entire space is still young, and a lot more evolution has to happen before end users will be ready to embrace these services.

Thanks,
Sridhar Vembu

Nice good start even if it doesn't have all the bells and whistles! At least, in the long term MS wont dictate the terms of technology to 80 - 90% who bought MS Office products.

Thanks Google, you are heaven sent!

Ram: "Why not just use Excel?" Perhaps because Excel isn't free??? (unless you're into heavy piracy)

For people talking about macros, advanced functions, even stuff like charts, you need to keep one thing in mind: MSFT themselves commissioned a survey several years ago and found that a large percentage of Excel users just used the app for incredibly simple things, like making lists. Google Spreadsheet (and others) are not designed for Excel power users. They're designed to meet the needs of the median Excel user, who only uses the very simplest features and doesn't have a need to pay hundreds of dollars to access all the more advanced stuff.

Just a few words to say about all of you comparing it to Excel.

Office 2007

Download the beta, and you'll see what I mean. It's FAR more intuitive to use, and easier to get to features most people didn't know existed.

So before comparing it to Excel, remember to look at Microsoft's latest ventures as well

David's Quote
"Thanks Google, you are heaven sent!"

Come on guys! don't blindly oppose MS just becoz the rest of the world is opposing. And what do think Google gonna do after amassing such a huge information. It's anybody's guess.

Don't rate a product by company, go by it's features, else you'll get F'dUp.

To be honest, I'm quite impressed.

If you don't like - don't use / don't moan!

"Download the beta, and you'll see what I mean. It's FAR more intuitive to use, and easier to get to features most people didn't know existed."

Is it a legal d/l?

First off, you can't take this with you if you are a traveling professional. If you can't get to the internet, you can't use it. No worries for MS there.

Second, everybody loves to hate MS. I know I complain about their operating systems all the time, security, etc. Word can be frustrating. I use it because it's the standard. Access is too expensive, Power Point is for losers, What exactly is Publisher for anyway? Front Page is too limited, etc. etc.

The exception, however, is Excel. I never cease to be amazed at the things I can do with it. While I am an engineer, I am not a computer professional, but I have written fully automated data acqusition systems with VBA in it, I can do polynomial regressions, and on and on. I suppose I would be considered a power user and am predisposed not to like the idea of a trim spreadsheet, but salesmen who don't use fancy math or hookup to other devices also use Excel on airplanes, etc. all the time. Desite the fact that this is free, I don't see Excel taking much of a hit from this except for people like the aformentioned soccer coach or someone using it for home applicacations. Good luck to Google on it nonetheless....

quite simple and easy to use -- pretty good for a beta product.

I have a little excel file that calculates hours. I don't want to spend 100's of dollars to do just that. And I use spreadsheet from time to time to do other simple things. I'm very impressed with Google spreadsheet. If they can add the Drag & Drop feature, and more formats, I think they have very good chance of taking away few (not many) of Microsoft customers. I do use OpenOffice. But I like the idea of using web browser.

Seeing a couple points in the comments I find interesting: --
1) Comparing to Excel is ineveitable, and I see it in almost every post with any substance - but you don't whip out your copy of Excel from any computer connected to the net - you use it only on the computer you installed it on. And you only use the files on your hard drive. This is a portability boon for people like myself who do a lot of their work from whatever computer is closest at the time.

2) Those "power-user" features are almost all possible with enough time spent in coding. This is a basic start, not the final product (Even Excel still undergoes developement, and early versions had barely any more features, when you get down to it)

Wait for sometime, its gonna get better, like Gmail did. A nice platform agnostic app, and kudos to Google once again for bringing out an app absolutely free. Days of Microsoft charging exorbitantly r surely numbered.

For all those saying Microsoft has nothing to worry about...

They fear Google more than any other company on the planet right now. You don't do that without reason.

Also, Microsoft has been investing billions into the .NET framework and ASP.NET, which will directly compete with the type of things Google is aiming for with Writely and Google Spreadsheet.

YOU may not think Microsoft has anything to worry about... but they themselves sure do.

For those asking, why not use Excel -- web based products permit better collaboration.
That being said, I would NOT put things like confidential (customer information!) information online.

Personally, I think there are two other online apps that do better than Google. I get frustrated that Google gets the attention b/c of the big name -- but is not always the top performer.
I prefer the following two apps:

Jackspot Tracker
http://tracker.jot.com/

or

iRows
http://mashable.com/weblist/irows/

Both of these are far more developed -- will import and export from Excel, Open Office and others, will permit you to insert into a web page either as dynamic or static and have security features that permit you to set whom you want to access the spreadsheet.

Microsoft could learn a lot from google. But not about creating spreadsheet programs. This is really a lot more basic then Excel. Excel is honestly one of the best spreadsheeting programs in existance, well documented, with great functionality, multiple plugins, and a logical format.

This might be a decent web tool (though I don't know how much more functionality it has then, say, an email attachment). But it's no competition for Microsoft.

Being a seasoned developer myself, I'm really amazed with this kind of emerging desktop-like web applications.

Believe me, the work done behind this kind of application is enormous. Server side-scripting is very unflexible compared to traditional development environments. The way the're able to preserve and share so much state information relying on a virtualy stateless paradigm leaves me speechless.

I agree with Travis, if the developers have been able to produce this much, it's only a matter of time for them to be able to offer the "whole enchilada" ;)

Kudos to Google & Zoho Sheet programmers.

- A more-than-impressed mexican programmer :)

there is a saying that there's value in turning a $100 billion business into a $50 billion business, provided that someone else is losing $100 billion and you're getting the $50 billion.

w/ gmail, gcal, writely, and now g-spreadsheet, it is almost possible to do most of your productivity work using only a browser. there is enormous sticky-ness potential. on one hand, MSFT loses revenue as less consumers are purchasing office, and on the other hand, users are gravitating to google for their online experience, ultimately keeping google web search in the dominant position and making $$$.

if and when google releases GDrive and people get tired of hard drive crashes or lost data backups, google could become the virtual computer.

that's how i see it.

Alright I just wanted to comment on how Google makes money.

Simple really, they sell advertising space that is not intrusive and text based. They make a lot of money just doing that. But they need people to go to there site to see it. People love free sh**, so the more awesome free apps, etc, is the same as advertising. How much has Google spent on TV advertising? nada... That cost alone vs. Yahoooooooo-oo means they have a purse to use. I think they are geniuses, and I actually can't think of any ads ever (Except for that Want Ad on the billboard)

I may be wrong, who knows what they think.

JC

This is just going to be a fun application that is going to hang around for the next 2 to 3 years. No one is going to use it in their right mind for important number crunching. Only an idiot would use it for anything remotely important that can be accessed later by government agencies.

And thats true especialy for companies and corporate
numbers.

Google is losing the plot, and going the way of the Hollywood system, when companies who had no business doing movies bought in for "synergy" etc... bloated and failed.

Writely made sense when it came out - the collaborative text makes use of the web in an symbiotic relationship. And it works.

Like YouTube, it works perfectly, found a very specific niche, without all the harassment of G-mail requirements, of Google ads and products and those attempts to "figure you out" as a taste.

BUT as soon as Writely was bought up by Google and they froze memberships, came improved versions, BETTER - like rallypoint. So who needs Google? It just doesnt add up as it does when Google does Search oriented functions, which is its strength.

And its OBVIOUS, PROVEN intention to side with government over you, like in China - i.e. your spreadsheets, your conversations, are going to be spied on.

What person whose IP is sited in a bad (China etc..) situation, is going to SHARE anything online??

Maps=perfect Google ap. Search anything=perfect Google app.

But pretending to be altruistic "open" environment... come off of it. Please.

as a non-advanced user: excel is hard to use and horrible.
i cant do anything with it. excel 97 - excel 2003, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. maybe the study shows people dont use adanced features because of a simple reason: excel hasnt improved.

ahh, the sign of no innovation!

look at any other product... if users change their use of the product, that means there has been an improvement offers new leverage to do things differently.

if you are an advanced user, of course you will like it... you dont count. you are the same as the Microsoft haters, very biased.

Hi,

Most of the time, my spreadsheet use is rudimentary. Why do I have to pay for all of those extra-frills, when I do not need them? Many do need those extras in a spreadsheet, while some and probably many also like me are rudimentary user of spreadsheet. In the past, we had Lotus 123 which to me for my use is more than enough. I do sometimes macro-programming in Lotus, but this is rudimentary.

Bren D Buenaluz

Why is the world full of cynics?
Appreciate what is new and easy and Free

Way to go Google!

Great application...

Google lately has really been impressing me. Regardless of what people think, I believe this is the future of Office applications and Google is on top as far as innovation goes.

Leave it up to MS to copy more Google products momentarily

how do they make money?

see posts regarding 'how to download'

I wish you could do even basic charting, but other than that, it does at least 90% of what most people need a spreadsheet to do and does those quite well for a web-app. Of the 10's of thousands of functions and features in Excel, 99% of the users probably use less than 100 - the only hard part is picking the right 100 and you're never going to make techies and hardcore Excel users happy.

If you want to do something odd, like track your diet progress and be able to update data from anywhere you might be (which is what I'm trying out with it), it seems perfect. The collaboration features make it nice to do what spreadsheet programs were originally designed to do - work out calculations on an electronic ledger.

Think of the hundreds of businesses that used the DOS version of Lotus 1-2-3 - Google's product is about that functional (more in some areas, less in others).

If I could change one thing about Google Spreadsheet today, which would really impact Microsoft, I'd add the capability to handle large spreadsheets of a million rows or more. Like Quatro Pro (but quicker) or like Vista.

That's something a lot of business users and organizations would like to be able to do, because it's more convenient than using a database for many users. Of course, that means huge file transfers and wideband access.... unless the app could be made to work standalone on the local machine without web access?

If the files have to be processed in google-space (on their servers) rather than the local machine, I reckon they'd have to limit them to the gdrive allotment. It's interesting though to think of how lean a local machine could be (cp. pda) when most of the core processing is done on the Google side.

Sooner or later someone needs to ask if the clients using Google Spreadsheet could all be turned into a distributed computing array, either directly to support GSS or discretely by piggy-backing processes along with normal application traffic. This could all get very very interesting.

I've been using FlySuite for some time and will not be making the swith to Google Spreadsheets anytime soon. With FlySuite, I have access to create and edit full featured documents and spreadsheets. I do pay a fee, but it's worth it considering that I can access my documents anywhere and collaborate with colleagues both online and off.

Here's the deal folks,
Google Spreadsheet is awesome for "lite" spreadsheet work at home because it's free and allows basic functionality. Excel is still needed though at your job for more advance work. That's all folks. What's so hard to understand?

I would like to believe Google Spreadsheet will replace Excel, but I'd believe that if we're using Google OS on our machines now or use Google's remote OS. Something to think about....

good job google
I am wid you wid all yours betas & alphas
zoho you guys rock too
if not for pcworld I wd not know zoho
thanks pcworld

For those unable to find an invite, they are selling on ebay for $0.99

Not to brag but i'm an excel pro and this google spread sheet is crippled and gutless compared to excel to say the least. I love microsoft's products and people who criticize MS rarely have a good explanation or defense.

You don't need an invite - just use your gmail address and password.