Google “Docs & Spreadsheets” Launches

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1. Faisal
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 9:15 pm

   They better acquire Zoho.

2. Ching
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 9:20 pm

   I like Writely and Google Spreadsheets, and use both extensively. I like the integration that’s slowly happening across the various Google apps, and that’s probably the biggest factor that’s kept me using Google services instead of the offerings from 37signals.

   However, security needs a whole lot more work. Encryption, for one thing. And more granular access control - instead of giving everyone “collaborator” access with full capabilities to edit and share the document, I’d like to be able to designate “editors” who can edit the document but aren’t allowed to publish it or invite other collaborators or viewers.

   Google has a good track record of improving their products based on user feedback, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ll offer next. Maybe incorporate Writely as the default text editor for Blogger? That would be nice.

3. Dreamchaser
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 9:42 pm

   Great Update! I was wondring why the article was removed for a while ? And I see a lot of link errors in the docs.google.com page. Probably its not Live completely and google guys are still working around ?

   Cheers,
   Dreamchaser

4. Michael Arrington
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 9:43 pm

   just a wordpress error. it got reset to private somehow.

5. Amar
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 9:48 pm

   Have you tried upload a .XLS file at docs.google.com? I get an error that Writely does not support .XLS file.

   I thought this integrated site allows uploading both .doc and .xls files. What’s the deal here?

6. Amar
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 9:53 pm

   Now it seems to be working. Seems like it was a temporary glitch in the app.

7. lemon obrien
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 9:57 pm

   @ching -> I suspect you work for google.

8. Kaushal
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 10:12 pm

   @Ching: You can try http://www.instacoll.com which allows you to collaborate from with in your exisitng MS Office apps. There is no need to upload any docs to a central server. You can do it right from the Office SUite.

   For having more control on your docs, you can check out http://www.live-documents.com. Again this also works right from with in your office apps.

9. Ching
   

   October 10th, 2006 at 10:21 pm

   Kaushal - thanks for the tip!

   I love my advanced Excel formulas and functions; the lack of equivalent power in Google Spreadsheets has been driving me nuts. If I can use Instacoll to seamlessly share my Excel spreadsheets, I may consider sharing only the simplest stuff over at Google. Will check it out…

10. Jason Lemkin
    

    October 10th, 2006 at 10:47 pm

    Clarity is great, but the name could use a little work Not too read too much into it, but ‘Docs & Spreadsheets’ alone doesn’t suggest it is one of Google’s largest initiatives . . .

11. varun mathur
    

    October 10th, 2006 at 11:08 pm

    @kaushal: I tried InstaColl a while back, and wasn’t impressed with the usability. When you guys have figured it out, and others are recommending it, I’ll give it a shot again. However, I do believe that such collaborative features within Office apps are a better option and will probably be an integral part of Office in the future. No wonder that the person behind InstaColl is Sabeer Bhatia, who sold Hotmail to Microsoft for some $400 million.

12. joe
    

    October 10th, 2006 at 11:17 pm

    I don’t know about browsing docs. I’ve gotten comfortable with the gmail interface, but using that same method for managing documents I find to be less comfortable. The collaboration stuff sounds nice though.

13. john
    

    October 10th, 2006 at 11:38 pm

    This is a nice development for those who work in a distributed startup like myself. We’d been using Google spreadsheets and Writely to great effect for months now to keep track of milestones and work items. This step towards integrating the two is nice, and I can’t wait to see how much further Google (and others) take this - each development just makes working in a virtual group that much easier.

14. deeter
    

    October 10th, 2006 at 11:43 pm

    Grammar check is still missing from the online word processors. I wonder why, it doesn’t seem that hard (see http://www.spellchecker.net)

    Also, I would prefer if the spell and grammer check were ‘live’ instead of ‘manual’ (example: http://me.eae.net/stuff/litesp.....edemo.html)

    if these two things are provided by docs & spreadsheet (whats with the name) or zoho, i might just not use word anymore!

15. Christian Burns
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 12:07 am

    Can I please choose to have the old writely toolbar? I use it all the time, I feel like I am stuck in Gmail. Is there a way to make this skinable? Is this what we get for being an early adopter?

16. Amit Chowdhry
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 1:18 am

    Rumor is that Google is now eyeing Facebook for $2.3 bill

17. Kenny
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 2:39 am

    The Writely and Spreadly nicknames were far better than “Docs and Spreadsheets”. Its only a matter of time before it all gets rechristened gOffice anyway, so why the delay?

18. Alasdair Allan
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 2:46 am

    It still doesn’t work in Safari…

    http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/.....heets.html

19. Jamie
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 3:20 am

    Google Docs basically has a Office 2007-esque Ribbon interface now for the toolbar.

20. Rex Dixon
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 4:02 am

    I guess I will have to check both releases out - Zohox and this Google one!

    Rex

21. Erik Herz
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 4:31 am

    It would be cool if someone could write a little localhost browser proxy that would somehow cache and enable offline editing of these documents so I can continue working on them on the plane and then synch them back up when I reconnect to the net.

    Erik

22. TG
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 4:41 am

    I have used Writely for blog publishing and works well the email publishing feature - outlook in my case. Worth trying out for bloggers. dozens of these out there… but Google has it down to a simple way of doing it - and definitely stands out.

23. Jamie
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 4:48 am

    “It would be cool if someone could write a little localhost browser proxy that would somehow cache and enable offline editing of these documents so I can continue working on them on the plane and then synch them back up when I reconnect to the net.

    Erik
    ”

    Why not just save your Writely Document is a .doc file, edit it offline, then import it back into Writely?

24. elvirs
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 5:00 am

    also there is a little move to photos.
    did u notice the photos link in that left upper corner menu where the calendar,gmail etc was? google pushes picasa.

25. Benny Daon
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 5:14 am

    Text Document collaboration was a big problem a few years back.
    If you’re looking for text based collaboration today, just use one of the dozens of wikis out there.
    A word processor/text editor is a personal tool and such should be at the desktop. Google and the Web 2.0 crowed are just looking for eyeballs and will do anything to get them regardless of the users needs.
    I see Tesco’s decision to sell office-like application for £20 as much more important for consumers. Being the biggest retailer in the UK, Tesco thinks consumers are going to be happy to shell out £20 and get a simple office package.
    Makes much more sense to me than living in this ‘live’ universe financed and maintained by advertisers.

26. Don M
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 5:23 am

    Funny listening to everyone expecting a fully-functional product. Both Google and Zoho realize they are in a unique spot in the industry where they can build from scratch and have less features. Most users don’t even use 60-70% of the features in desktop word processers.

    But I predict M$ will acquire Zoho. They need to.

    -dm

27. Jason
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 6:11 am

    I’m still waiting for Google to allow users of GMail for your domain to access these two offerings. It seems to me those users might be some of the most likely users of these apps, yet I have to use my personal GMail account to try them out.

28. Wayne Smallman
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 6:34 am

    There’s no Open command for Documents and the Find & Replace feature is (curiously enough) only ‘experimental’ at this stage.

    Of all the things I’d have expected to have been nailed down, it would have been the search aspect…

29. Bob
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 6:45 am

    Microsoft’s response:

    http://www.computers.net/2006/.....s_spr.html

30. Lior Homen
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 6:53 am

    You guys should check out editgrid.com - an online spreadsheet app with collaboration, dynamic “web generated” fields and “viral excell” features.

    google spreadsheet is lightyears beyond

    I like writely though.

31. paul
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 7:15 am

    Was this just released today? Just wondering how they got testimonials from people around the world. Perhaps a special beta invite?:
    http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour.html

32. revan
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 7:25 am

    Google is evil monopolist. If so will continue futher, it will be worser than Microsoft

33. nashke
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 7:28 am

    the ongoing problem with all the web-based office tools - lack of suppport for right-to-left (RTL) languages like hebrew or arabic. this is an audience which has no alternative for MS-office (even open-office, at least the hebrew version, has many problems with RTL integration).
    So please, just a little effort, for a few hundred million users…

34. Robert Dewey
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 7:42 am

    This might piss a few people off, but I agree with Microsoft. Data should be located remotely with local clients doing dirty work, at least for intense applications. Zoho does a good job at making the office environment available via the browser, but what’s the core benefit? Why not just develop a low cost Office and network it as a remote application to all of the enterprise PC’s? I must say that Zoho is far advanced relative to Google - you can run their applications within an intranet setting, so you don’t have to trust a third-party with your data.

    One area that I *do* see web-applications and thin-client/web-based computing really taking off is in the embedded solutions sector - cellular phones, TiVo’s, DVR’s, PDA’s, home stereo’s - you name it, and it would benefit from such computing.

35. jhatak.com
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 7:43 am

    would google be open to the idea of letting the documents to be stored on the users server instead of their own ( google) servers. This can solve the concerns about privacy and security.

    Critical regulations like Sarbanes Oxley compliance will not let us put our documents on shared servers.

36. Mike D
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 7:53 am

    I use zoho regularly for my small business, finding the crm tool to be excellent for managing sales processes, etc. Free for up to 3 people. Meanwhile, writely was the best option for us when doing internal documentation, especially for its shared editing functionality.

    My only complaint was that writely documents weren’t ‘yet’ searchable. Now, they are. This tool is especially nice for planning and coordination; ie my partner in Silicon Valley and I regularly used writely to plan our blog/podcast, http://www.acagax.com.

    Now that it’s gotten rid of that wacky writely interface, and googlified, it looks to be even better.

    Meanwhile, I put my bid on Yahoo or another big player looking for a big zoho acquisition to jump right in this game…thoughts?

37. carl rahn griffith
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 9:51 am

    rumour has it that microsoft has some really neat office tools that even work when you are offline from the internet.

    amazing, but true.

38. Martin
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 11:21 am

    ‘Save as PDF’ is an attractive feature.

39. Kanwal
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 11:23 am

    You are now part of the BUZZ, Sharepoint BUZZ

    Visit http://www.sharepointbuzz.com

40. nofool
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 12:02 pm

    Caught in a lie. Check http://www.google.com/educator.....heets.html

    Goto “Teachers speak out”. Read what the first one says, about having used it for a long time already… and the Charts Wizard… not too good I’d say.

41. Jon D.
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 1:49 pm

    @revan - Google is not evil; in fact, they are famous for not doing evil.

    See #6 on their 10 things:
    http://www.google.com/intl/en/.....hings.html

42. johnkimble
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 2:51 pm

    I liked writely better. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but the default google blues and whites is getting old QUICK. Not to mention the responsiveness of the servers don’t even compare to each other. Writely was quick, while google hangs.

43. Lance Shields
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 3:04 pm

    As a designer, Writely was more appealing. I appreciate Google for many things but unfortunately visual appeal isn’t one of them. It’s a bit sad that they took a perfectly functional AND well designed web app and made it Google Whitebread. Google should get past it’s vanilla interface and move towards a friendlier design system. I thought hiring Douglas Bowman of StopDesign.com would help that.

44. paul
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 3:17 pm

    Hey “nofool”..weird, but like i said, unless they were part of a beta. Google bought Writely back in March (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/writely-so.html), so maybe they’re allowed to use the same quotes and replace the writely name?

45. Google Logs
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 3:53 pm

    After acquiring Writely, everyone knew that google is rolling out its own Web Office. Then came Google Spreadsheets which is really a great tool so far but still needs improvements if comparing to Microsoft Office or Open Office.

    http://googlelogs.blogspot.com.....oogle.html

46. francine hardaway
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 5:30 pm

    I tried it this morning and really liked it. It’s simple, but I’m a blogger, not an attorney, and I’ve never bothered to learn any more about Word than I originally need to know for producing documents. And having the docs online i helpful. Let’s not make too much of this; it’s meant for the masses.

47. Copiador Descarado
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 8:15 pm

    Perfect!

48. David Mackey
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

    I am excited for this integration, just moments before I learned of this new development I was explaining to a developer at work why I thought Google was making a mistake by not integrating their products more tightly.

49. wes
    

    October 12th, 2006 at 3:31 pm

    I liked what I say with the new Google Doc’s product and was about to start using it heavily for my work. However, it looks like there is a severe problem with its tagging feature. Check out the Google groups:
    http://groups.google.com/group.....ing=d&

    Tags worked fine with Writely, but when they migrated to the new system something got frigged big time. I’m interested to see if they can fix the tagging without major hassles for the users…. And I’m sure there are dozens of talented Googlian programmers working long hours trying to find a solution.

    Good luck guys & gals on the fix… I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.

50. wes
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 4:11 am

    Update on tagging problem. I checked this morning and everything is working the way it should.

    Thanks Google, great job!!!

51. 侃侃
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 9:36 am

    there are too many limits on the internet in China
    i can not use that freely
    

52. Chris
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 6:39 pm

    I have been using both a fair bit and its useful for me for them to be integrated together and get closer to gmail and calendar.

    However, I think all of these products are missing a key ingredient and what to me could be the second killer differentiator (the first being realtime collab) and that is pulling in dynamic data from 3rd part webservices/api’s/widgets.

    Think of how many times you’ve done a personal finances/portfolio spreadsheet in excel and had togo and look up a currency exchange rate or stock quote, input that manually and change it everytime you want to use that spreadsheet. Surely with Google’s vast array of verticals like finance, news, etc it would not be that hard for them to build in a simple rss function call that would allow spreadsheet users to pull in this kind of dynamic data.

    You could open it up somehow so that 3rd parties can make feeds available for calling into these apps - the equivalent of copy and pasting some javascript to embed a widget into your blog. I could imagine using something like dappit to create all sorts of interesting dynamicdata (weather, sports scores, stocks, alexa, etc).

    To me it moves the entire playing field along from simply replicating Office online and you no longer have questions like some of the people above asking what’s the point or what’s the value add? Its going to be tough for Office to compete with that.

    The third killer app here is sharing. There are millions of spreadsheets out there developed by smart people gathering dust on hard drives. If you look around the web, you can find places where people offer their templates for download but mostly on a paid basis. Why not encourage people to open source their spreadsheets - share them online like you would your code and in return you’re likely to get access to someone else’s gold nuggets. You have a great personal net worth tracker and I have a great model for projecting out the costs of my kids’ education.

    Change the names, toggle a few variables and off you go - no need to reinvent the wheel. Hackers have been doing this with code for years now and look how its revolutionized the way software is developed. Why not the same for spreadsheets/models?

53. 小象
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 9:25 pm

    I don’t have to buy Microsoft Office if i use this service. I think this service will develop quickly as good as Microsoft Office,even better.Then number of Microsoft Office sell will reduce.

54. 友善的鳥
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

    覺得這個構想不錯 不但可以立即上傳資料 也可以再沒有Microsoft Office 的情況下立即的工作 而不用等待安裝Microsoft Office的漫長時間 所以這種服務對講求快速的現代人是非常貼心的設計

55. s9326151 CYEL3A
    

    October 13th, 2006 at 10:06 pm

    In my mind, The idea is ideal,we know that Microsoft monopolize markets almost,If we have the other interface to hadle our Doc without setup Microsoft office,It’s convenient,and have a new choice to work~

56. streamcast
    

    October 14th, 2006 at 2:45 pm

    It’s a shame that writely vanished from the net. It’s interesting if the same is going to happen to youtube.

57. 9326354
    

    October 18th, 2006 at 9:15 am

    我覺得用這個方式來操作方便許多,不必安裝Microsoft Office就可使用,不僅省時也便利

58. dave
    

    October 19th, 2006 at 4:12 am

    A nifty part of their docs/spreadsheets is the chat. From inside a corporate firewall, I can open a google spreadsheet and invite whomever I want to view the spreadsheet - or just use the chat box to IM friends. Pretty nice workaround for those who aren’t allowed IM’ing.

    Aside from that tangent, I just think updating docs and spreadsheets from a web-based app is just awesomely convenient. But, do I have a false sense of security? Should I be continuing to back up data files at home periodically or are they safe on Google’s servers?

59. Mark
    

    October 30th, 2006 at 1:57 pm

    Microsoft office is bad, Google Docs, hm…

60. M. Stefffen
    

    November 16th, 2006 at 11:18 am

    The next step after Google Docs and Spreadsheets

    When I first encountered a promotion for Google Docs and Spreadsheets Beta version after logging out of my AdWords account I was skeptical. Could this application really offer all the benefits of software like MS Word and Excel in a web-based format? The fact that Google has been developing a few other very impressive web-based applications lately convinced me to at least give it a try. Google did not let me down, it does everything they claimed it would do, and does it very effectively. The fact that you can create a spreadsheet online, not only upload them from your hard drive, is my favorite feature. It is especially impressive that you are able to use the same formulas as in MS Excel directly on the web-based spreadsheet.

    Google Docs and Spreadsheets is a great collaboration tool. I can see it making a huge impact. However, I see this impact being for more simple collaboration needs. Students will probably use it more than any other group. It seems great for sending homework to yourself, working on assignments on various computers (in a library, computer lab, or other public computer labs common to academic campuses), and even for small companies with very simple collaboration needs.

    I do not, however, see this solution being implemented for large-scale collaboration. It lacks high-level database structuring, key reporting features, certain access control privilege settings, advanced search and are necessary for it to become a complete enterprise business solution. Nevertheless, I can only think of one application that has all these features; it could be called “Google Docs and Spreadsheets on steroids.” This web-based software, Interneer Intellect, would probably be more appropriate for mid-to-large sized organizations looking for a web-based collaboration solution. However, Intellect lacks the ability to create spreadsheets online. It does integrate with MS Excel, Access and Project to make up for that.

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