Content Matters

Now that I've had the chance to play with Google Spreadsheets a bit, here are my initial reactions:

Overall, it's a well-constructed implementation of Ajax.  In most ways, the app behaves like a software application not a web app.  Response times are fairly snappy and you don't feel like you're working on a hosted application.

The basic look and feel is, well, like a spreadsheet.  It's the same basic experience that we've had for more than 20 years.  It's hard to get excited about Google Spreadsheets as an application.  At the same time, the fact that Google has delivered a compelling ASP spreadsheet should come as a big boost to supporters of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model.  It's not that this application takes us to new capabilities, but rather that it proves that there's not a lot that you can't do in a hosted model anymore.

As previously mentioned, I don't see this replacing Excel for typical U.S. business users.  Instead, it may be used for a lot of the non-business-critical tasks that spreadsheets are used for, such as maintaining contact lists.  Also, with hosted applications, users may not want to entrust confidential data to Google.

In related news, TechCrunch posts that social software provider SocialText has struck a deal to be the exclusive distributor of wikiCalc, another web-based spreadsheet.  WikiCalc is the brainchild of Dan Bricklin, father of the spreadsheet, who launched VisiCalc for the Apple IIe in 1979.

The significance of this could be bigger than Google Spreadsheets, according to TechCrunch.  Integrating WikiCalc within SocialText will enable users to host the content inside their firewalls.  Also, as a wiki, wikiCalc offers a complete audit trail, so you can see who edited what.  WikiCalc is an open source application and the look and feel are more like a web page than a spreadsheet.  While that may turn off the number cruncher types, I think it makes row and column data much more accessible to a wider audience.

While Google Spreadsheets seems like a great tool for non-mission-critical applications, wikiCalc could see quick adoption within workgroups for sharing project documents.