Open Source Blog

So is this the beginning of the end for Microsoft Office, or just the beginning of the next hype cycle for Google Office? Either way, Google has begun testing an online spreadsheet application that could mount a challenge to Excel.

A sneak peak at the limited test of Google Spreadsheets is available here and combined with Google's March acquisition of web-based word processing platform Writely, it adds up to an increasing challenge for Microsoft.

How much of a challenge remains to be seen. We've signed up to the test but have not received our invite as yet, so all we have to go on is a few screen grabs and Google's own description, which promises the ability to create basic spreadsheets, upload .xls or .csv files, as well as store, edit and share the results with others.

That does not sound like a major challenge to Microsoft's Excel from a functionality perspective, especially given the new business intelligence functionality being lined up for Excel in Office 12, but for the casual user it could provide an easy to use alternative (it might just be me, but I find Excel to be the most counter-intuitive application I have ever tried to use).

For its part, Google is not pitching the Google Spreadsheets project as a major alternative to Excel. “We think we’re solving a different problem,” Jonathan Rochelle, product manager for the Google spreadsheet project and the former CEO of 2Web Technologies, told the FT, adding that Google expects users to turn to the product in order to share spreadsheets with others.

The real interest, of course, comes from the combination of online services that Google could offer as an alternative to Microsoft. Google already offers desktop search the Google toolbar, image management, and blogging software online, as well as Google Mail, Pages, Calendar, and Talk, and the broad testing of Writely is due to begin next month.

Whether this will be enough to challenge Microsoft has been the subject of much debate and I'm reminded of an excellent article on the subject from the New York Times that I was literally just about to blog a few weeks ago when I was happily interrupted.

"The wind is really behind Google, and Microsoft's main tool for navigating the future is the rear view mirror," commented Paul Saffo, a director of forecasting consultancy the Institute for the Future, in the NY Times story, as comparisons are made to the rise and fall of other US business giants, such as Ford, General Motors, Montgomery Ward, and Sears.

So is history about to repeat itself? Only time will tell, of course, or as Richard Tedlow, a professor at the Harvard Business School, sagely comments in the NY Times report: "I'm a historian. Ask me in 10 years and I'll tell you why what happened was inevitable."