Friedbeef’s Tech

After acquiring the online Word Processor Writely earlier this year, Google takes another swipe at Microsoft’s Office suite by releasing an online spreadsheet competitor to Excel. I got the chance to play with it earlier today after it’s preview release a few hours ago, so here’s a quick run down of what to expect.

Don’t expect it to replace Excel. This is nowhere close in terms of functionality, and is not meant to be, given that this is still considered a first generation online spreadsheet. It is worth noting however that there are already plenty of free online spreadsheets around like NumSum, Zoho Sheet, and my personal favourite - Irows.

The interface is clean, and gives a LOT of screen real estate for your work, in fact more than any of the three rival services described above. Speed is respectable, and you should have no trouble getting simple spreadsheets up and running.

Functionality: Google Spreadsheets vs Irows

Here are some of the functions which I missed in Google Spreadsheets found in Irows

• Any sort of Graphing
• Ability to add images to the spreadsheet
• The ability to apply formulas simply by dragging cells
• The ability to merge cells vertically (While I can merge them across…Why???)
• The ability to share by publishing the spreadsheet on your website
• Saving to Open Office Format

Here are some of the functions which Google Spreadsheets has, and Irows doesn’t:

• Real Time Multi User Editing. This is the “killer feature” in collaboration. While other spreadsheets will allow sharing, only one person can work on the sheet at once. In Google Spreadsheets, multiple people can work on it at the same time, with changes shown to other people in real time. Comes with a chat window also, so you can discuss changes with your team.
• Interactive ability to use formulas across multiple sheets (Irows requires you to type in the sheet labels, Google allows you to select them like Excel)
• More interactive formula selection. (Irows formulas are just text which you have to type in)
• Ability to freeze panes eg. to maintain certain rows on top

In conclusion, Google Spreadsheets it seems that it is comparable to the current offering of online spreadsheets, with it’s real time editing features really breaking new ground in this product sphere. It will however be interesting however to see how Google integrates this to their other services.

Related Links:

Google Spreadsheets
Google Spreadsheets Preview

Updated: 8th June (Corrected the statement above which originally said Irows could not refer to other sheets)