Internet titan Google took another step today in its face-off with Microsoft, launching Google Docs and Spreadsheets, a service which combines the recently launched Google Spreadsheets with the recently-acquired online word processor Writely. The new combo will be outlined at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this week.
Although neither Writely nor Google Spreadsheets offer the deep feature sets of productivity stalwarts Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, the simple fact is that most users of Microsoft’s mainstream Office applications only use a small core selection of those programs’ features. Unsurprisingly, that’s the functionality Google Docs and Spreadsheets focuses on, while offering document storage, sharing, an collaboration features made possible by being truly online applications. Users can store documents on Google’s servers, control who has access to them, edit and manage documents from anywhere they can get a modern Web browser and Internet access, export documents to DOC, CLS, RTF, PDF, and HTML formats (among others), and even edit documents with other users in real time.
At this point, the word processing and spreadsheet components are not tightly integrated—for instance, there’s no way to embed a word processing document in a spreadsheet, or use Google Spreadsheets to manage a table in a word processing document. Nonetheless, the integration of Writely into Google’s online application toolbox is another warning to Microsoft that Google does not plan to cede the online application arena to the Redmond software maker.
