They’ve already taken on board Writely as an online word processor and now Google are launching Google Spreadsheets right out of Google Labs – with support for both XLS and CSV files, and again, its another free service. Had been talking in the office last week about how it would be a great way to save on licensing or massive license fees – just do the whole lot online. If they keep going at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised by it either!
Google labs are amazing, and provide a great service to the community. And a free online office suite would do wonders in cutting down licensing costs, I agree. Yet, just like with any online communications there are issues such as privacy and safety that may arise. In the Google Spreadsheets Privacy Policy you read:
“Google Spreadsheets stores, processes and maintains your spreadsheets and previous versions of those spreadsheets in order to provide the service to you.”
This is a standard policy with most Google services, including Desktop, since they need to do that for functional reasons. However there is no telling what Google may at some point do or have to do with your spreadsheet information. You do not own the Google servers. So I am not sure how well it will be received as a business front-end.
In any case thanks for the heads up on this – very interesting to know.
now, that i didn’t read. Am waiting for an invite, had applied earlier. Thats my only drawback about an online service like it. With support for XLS and CSV it seems ideal but it should be optional whether you want to save previous versions of your work… if it keeps backing up all the versions you have of the one spreadsheet, that could lead to a whole lot of information, and a whole other ball game…