What Google Spreadsheets Means
Tuesday, June 6th 2006 | Ismael Ghalimi
Today, the blogosphere is buzzing about the release of Google Spreadsheets, an Office 2.0 alternative to Microsoft Excel. Assaf Arkin and Nick Carr have great articles on the subject. They both share the same idea: Google Spreadsheets is not a replacement for Microsoft Excel, it’s a complement. Even though they both have valid points, I tend to disagree with their conclusions.
If by replacement they mean feature-for-feature match, then Google Spreadsheets is indeed a long way away from replacing Microsoft Excel, even though I tend to believe that it should be technically feasible within three to five years. But nobody cares for that, or at least very few people do, and that is precisely why I believe that Google Spreadsheets or Zoho Sheet will eventually replace Microsoft Excel. Because most Excel users do not use its advanced features, a simpler online alternative will be good enough for them, and if it happens to be free and provide good import/export capabilities for Excel’s proprietary format, the vast majority of Excel users will simply never upgrade to Microsoft Excel 2007, and will eventually make the switch to Google Spreadhseets or similar alternatives, mainly for convenience reasons.
Following this reasoning, Google Spreadhseets would seem like the perfect Excel killer. But when I pointed this out to Assaf this morning, he was quick to correct me and indicated that Google Spreadsheets should rather be viewed as a Microsoft Office killer. Here is why: on one hand, customers buying Microsoft Excel on its own usually need the advanced features that are offered by the product. On the other hand, most Excel casual users usually got their copy Excel as part of the larger Microsoft Office package. If they get a good-enough free online alternative for Excel, but also Word with Writely or Zoho Writer, all we need is a good Office 2.0 alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint for them to pass on Microsoft Office and save $399. Thumbstacks is already pretty good, and I would be surprised if Google and Zoho do not follow suit within the next two to three months. Once this happens, Office 2.0 will have reached milestone 2, as described in this past article.
Now, where I agree with Nick Carr is that Office 2.0 spreadsheets will be used in different ways than desktop spreadsheets are being used today. For example, they will be mainly used for manipulating existing data, rather than creating data from scratch. I met Steve Fisher and Adam Gross from Salesforce.com yesterday, and among other things we discussed the idea of using an Office 2.0 spreadsheet to manipulate data stored in Salesforce.com, for data cleansing or data analysis purposes. Granted, you could do that with Microsoft Excel today, but the convenience of having a spreadhsheet editor embedded within your online application should help convert more than a few Excel users.
As explained in this previous article, it’s time for Microsoft to catch up…
UPDATE 6/7/2006: Assaf sent a great comparison matrix for EditGrid, Google Spreadsheets and Microsoft Excel. I would love to see how Zoho Sheet measures up, for this is the one I am currently using.
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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Zoho - the “Safer Office”…
(Updated) It’s somewhat ironic that in the very days I’ve just written about Duet, the joint SAP-Microsoft product, I am seriously thinking of escaping from Microsoft-prison, and switching to the most promising WebOffice (Office 2.0) suite. Perhaps…
This is interesting: 5 years ago a company called Blox came out with a killer web-based spreadsheet application. They ended being acquired by an analytics company, which ended up being acquired by IBM.
It would be interesting to analyze what is really different now, and why we think the desirability aspect of this problem has been fixed. There is a chasm between this is a cool idea and this is something I want to use day-in/day-out.
The one thing that seems to be nice with Google Spreadsheets is the collaborative aspect. It will be interesting to see if that is enough to push it over the hump.
- Edwin
Edwin,
As you and i know, it’s all about timing.
Timing is better now that it was five years ago. A lot better.
I don’t think Excel is under any threat, it’s an excellent application. It’s hard to replicate that on the Web, the Web platform just doesn’t scale that way. The Web is great for small, light applications, or those that benefit more from running on a server.
Which is exactly what makes Google Spreadsheets, Zoho Sheet and their likes so powerful. If you start with MS Office as the baseline, they contain just the right number of features that most people really need and care to pay for. And by not doing more, they keep it simple to learn, easy to use and cheap.
But that’s a flawed comparison. In fact, for most people they are better than MS Office because they do sharing, backup and retrieval without pain. That’s the benefit of running on a server.
Your average MS Office user only needs a small set of features, but can’t live without the import/export capability.
Thankfully, that clunky time wasting Save As/Attach approach is going the way of the dinosaurs. If you want to share it, why not author it online?
Assaf,
I could not agree more.
Why is timing better now?
Edwin,
Timing is better, for several reasons:
- Web browsers have improved, something like AJAX is finally working
- Complete suites are available, not just spreadsheets
- Users are more comfortable with web-based interfaces
- Broadband is available to many more users
- Web services are available, hence making mashups possible
- A viable competitor to Microsoft has emerged (Google)
- Large markets that cannot afford Microsoft Office now exist (China, India)
Edwin,
It was Talking Blocks, and yes, IBM appears to have disappeared that product.
[…] The perspective that gets lost in these debates is that Microsoft itself appears to be well along the way to delivering componentized Office (Live) that satisfies the needs of casual and advanced users alike. […]
On timing:
1. People are much more comfortable using the Web for daily stuff.
2. And storing their data on servers.
3. It’s easier than ever to get the word out.
4. Hardware and bandwidth are no longer a factor.
5. Development tools are much better.
Developing on the cheap and quickly ramping up the user base is the only way you can compete at such a low price point.
[…] Update: I wasn’t clear on context, so let me clarify. […]
Ismael,
While I generally agree with you, I encourage you to look at SharePoint’s Excel integration. You can flip between a list view and an editable Excel view and an export with dynamic links to actual Excel cells with one click. It’s very powerful. Our latest product is built on SharePoint and we use it internally. I find myself using the direct Excel integration almost daily. However, I would note that the online integration is really no Excel (it has limited functionality), which would lead me to definitely agree with your argument that a “good enough” online version is enough. The problem lurking for Microsoft is that 90% of the users use 10% of the features. To some extent this is why SF.com was so successful over Siebel, and PeachTree or QuickBooks still beat Oracle Financials out for the SMB user.
In the real world people don’t know and don’t care that Google does anything else than search (and it’s great at search of course). Check the Google Spreadsheet user adoption outside of the Silicon Valley bloggers/technical community in one or two years, and you’ll realize users are just not going to change their habits when it’s actually working pretty well for them today.
Office “2.0″ will be somewhat of a reality in 5 years, but it’ll be evolutionary and certainly not revolutionary regardless of how much you try to convince yourself of it. By then you’ll need to leverage your existing user base (that’s both residential and business) and provide a highly connected, seamless online and offline solution to be the champ. That’ll certainly not be Zoho or any of those startups, and I wouldn’t bet on Google Office beta for anything else than a marginal marketshare (did you check the Google apps adoption rate lately)?
Niel,
You’re right on! And let’s not forget that Microsoft established its dominance by addressing the needs of SMB users first. Office 2.0 will establish itself in the marketplace by doing the same.
John,
With all due respect, I must disagree. Back in 1999, Altavista was working pretty well for me as a search engine, but when Google came along, I and many others switched pretty fast, and in less than three years, Google established itself as the leader.
The reason for this is low switching costs. Now that Google Spreadsheets and Zoho Sheet can cleanly import and export Excel spreadsheets and are available for free, switching costs have been significantly reduced. Once they add support for macros, they’ll be even lower. At that point, I would expect a significant user base to make the switch, and start publishing and sharing spreadsheets online. This will fuel a viral marketing push that will accelerate the transition.
And last time I checked, Gmail was pretty popular too, for similar reasons…
Now, where I agree with you is that very few organizations will be able to deliver an enterprise-class Office 2.0 platform to a large customer base. And when I say very few, I mean less than the number of fingers I have on one hand. Will Zoho be part of them? If wish them that much success, but I cannot really tell, for it depends on their ability to execute, especially on the marketing side. Will Google be part of them? You can bet on it. How long will it take: as you said, about 5 years.
Stay tuned…
Ismael,
I couldn’t disagree more with your analysis.
Have you actually *used* Google Spreadsheet for any real work?
See my comments here.
I don’t except overnight adoption, especially not when it comes to changing habits or requires you to import/export stuff.
But anything that runs on the Web, you can try the moment you hear about it. And you can use it side by side. You don’t import all your data, you just edit a spreadsheet that someone shared with you.
And that’s a huge speed up in adoption rate. Look at the adoption rate of landline phones. Compare that to cellphones. Compare that to Skype.
I commented before that there is no connectivity problem. There’s a hard core group of people who work on their computer from the back seat of a cab, on flights, in the forests of the Amazon.
But the main part of the bellcurve are always tethered when they use their computer (and I include WiFi in that).
Barry,
I have not used Google Spreadsheets for any real work just quite yet, but I do use Zoho Sheet on a very regular basis, for very real work. For example, all my cross-country flight planning is done with it. You can see an example of an actual navigation log here. It includes fairly complex trigonometric formulas used to implement E6B-type functionality, which was a good way to test the solution. I exported the spreadhseet and imported it back into Google Spreadsheets. It worked perfectly, but I could not share it with you for you did not use a gmail.com email address.
Ismael,
I will try to play devil’s advocate because I think that it would be interesting if we could be more explicit:
Web browsers have improved, something like AJAX is finally working.
I do not buy this. Blox was a far superior implementation: cut and paste, formula replication, column and line manipulation.
Complete suites are available, not just spreadsheets.
I do not buy this. Most of these suites are not really integrated. No mash ups, not cut and paste, no single sign on.
Users are more comfortable with web-based interfaces.
I buy that. But I am not sure that this will be enough because interfaces like Blox did not really grasp adoption with advanced users.
Broadband is available to many more users.
This is true, but again at the time Blox emerged, I was at Netscape and we had plenty of bandwith.
Web services are available, hence making mashups possible.
I buy that and this could be with some of the collaborative aspects the thing that could change the desirability aspect of those solutions. It would be really nice it there was a Web Macro feature allowing users to plug and play various functions available on the next as services or ATOM feeds.
A viable competitor to Microsoft has emerged (Google).
I do not buy this. Google is a consumer company. They do the spreadsheet thingy just because it is an easy way to hurt and distract Microsoft.
Large markets that cannot afford Microsoft Office now exist (China, India).
What about OpenOffice?
-Edwin
Edwin,
First of all, let me tell you how glad I am to meet another BPM expert who is expressing such an interest for Office 2.0. It’s yet another confirmation that both subjects — BPM 2.0 and Office 2.0 — matter.
Then, please let me answer your objections:
Web browsers have improved, something like AJAX is finally working.
[Edwin] I do not buy this. Blox was a far superior implementation: cut and paste, formula replication, column and line manipulation.
[Ismael] Much like Flash and Flex are more advanced than plain AJAX, but AJAX is free and does not require compilation or server-side transcoding. Therefore AJAX will succeed (already did) where Blox and many others failed.
Complete suites are available, not just spreadsheets.
[Edwin] I do not buy this. Most of these suites are not really integrated. No mash ups, not cut and paste, no single sign on.
[Ismael] Indeed. And more problems are listed on the Office 2.0 Bug Tracker. A lot of work remains ahead of us. But I am willing to bet that what we’ll get by the end of the year will get very close to the first version of Microsoft Office in terms of functionality and integration, and will offer a lot more in terms of collaboration capabilities.
Users are more comfortable with web-based interfaces.
[Edwin] I buy that. But I am not sure that this will be enough because interfaces like Blox did not really grasp adoption with advanced users.
[Ismael] But that’s exactly the point! Advanced Office users won’t be the early adopters for Office 2.0, for they need Office’s advanced features which are missing in Office 2.0 so far. Early adopters for Office 2.0 will be casual Office users. Much like early users for personal computers were casual computer users. Just remember the use cases people used to justify the buying of a personal computer in the late 70’s and early 80’s? Doing basic accounting. Storing recipes. Playing games. Very casual activities, compared to what the big-iron computer guys would do. Casual users will drive early adoption for Office 2.0.
Broadband is available to many more users.
[Edwin] This is true, but again at the time Blox emerged, I was at Netscape and we had plenty of bandwith.
[Ismael] Indeed, but because only Netscape and a few others had access to such bandwidth, you could not benefit from the network effect that is available today. And this network effect is what comes out of the collaboration features that make Office 2.0 different and valuable.
Web services are available, hence making mashups possible.
[Edwin] I buy that and this could be with some of the collaborative aspects the thing that could change the desirability aspect of those solutions. It would be really nice it there was a Web Macro feature allowing users to plug and play various functions available on the next as services or ATOM feeds.
[Ismael] Agreed!
A viable competitor to Microsoft has emerged (Google).
[Edwin] I do not buy this. Google is a consumer company. They do the spreadsheet thingy just because it is an easy way to hurt and distract Microsoft.
[Ismael] I do not know about that. Google’s users are consumers, but Google’s customers are corporate buyers. Does it make Google a consumer company? I don’t think so. At the end of the day, both Google and Microsoft are going after the same market: the next computing platform, built for the Internet, and their users will be both consumers and corporate users. The real question is how they will make money from serving such users. So far, Microsoft charged its users, while Google charged corporate buyers, who essentially become sponsors for a service that is provided for free to a large user base. The long-term viability of these two business models is the most difficult question as far as I can tell.
Large markets that cannot afford Microsoft Office now exist (China, India).
[Edwin] What about OpenOffice?
[Ismael] It’s a good free alternative to Microsoft Office for power users.
Google Spreadsheets is pretty cool, as is Writely, for collaboration and as a freebie. But IMHO applications that “need to work on a plane” may need to stay tethered to the laptop for quite a while, or at least have a client version/option. And integrating the client and the web service can be tricky — it can more than double the work. See Salesforce Offline — pretty behind on-line platform.
I agree with Edwin’s point regarding OpenOffice. It solves the emerging market problem. It’s free to distribute, it runs on multiple OS, it runs on cheap hardware, and it works.
Actually, it runs on cheaper hardware better than some AJAX applications I’ve used. I don’t think cheap is a compelling argument for moving online. Convenience is.
Ismael,
Blox was an AJAX application. A very advanced one.
I think that your point about the adoption being a bottom up adoption (I mean average users first and advanced users at the tail) is interesting and could be an interesting troyan horse. It will be interesting to watch and see if that prediction become true.
Regarding Google, I truely believe that they are purely a consumer, add-driven company, and that everything else is just a way to proactively defend themselves against Microsoft and to distract them. Think about it, with a few million dollars and a handful of smart engineers, they can run an experiment and make Microsoft loose some sleep. Why would they not do it? Does it make them a competitor to Microsoft in the enterprise? Not really.
Have a good week end,
-Edwin
The Heat is On: Spreadsheets on the Web 2.0…
I recently visited the homepage of SocialText, because I got invited to a SocialText Wiki which will be used for preparing a F2F gathering in San Francisco end of month. (I am not a huge fan of wikis but it…
Here is a fact: the network is neither a disk nor a memory bus.
About ten years ago I ported on old version of Lotus 1-2-3 to Java and made it a downloadable applet. Lotus subsequently productized it.
What we all learned was that as long as we kept the functionality (and thus the applet size) down to a bare minimum, load time over the network could be made to be just barely acceptable. But as it turned out the functionality was not sufficient to build a real application.
The AJAX-style spreadsheets suffer from an even worse problem, which is that they seem to send every calculation up to the server. This results in annoying wait times for even very simple data entry scenarios. I can’t imagine what that would be like in the case where there are millions of users and/or large data sets (e.g. matrices).
Worse, the prospect that a host will index your data and keep that index around for its own purposes should scare all of us.
Now I entirely agree that sharing is a compelling feature, and this is part of the motivation behind Excel Server.
I think everyone has missed a fundamental point…
The Google appliance range currently delivers Google search functions for Intranets. In addition to search, future Google appliances will offer a complete Office suite that runs over an organization’s Intranet.
Plug it in | Turn it on | Presto… an instant Office suite server accessible via a browser. Thick clients, thin clients, Windows, Mac, Linux… it will support them all. It also adds an interesting perspective to the recent alignment of Dell and Google whereby Dell will manufacture and supply the appliance hardware for Google…
Lotus eSuite was a great concept, but ahead of its time. The hardware and bandwidth didn’t measure up, and users were not accustomed to editing documents online.
All this has changed.
I’m sure there are limitations to online spreadsheets when it comes to huge datasets and complex calculations. That’s where companies get to innovate and sell better solutions.
I didn’t run into any of these limitations because I’m not a demanding user. I think a lot of people fall into that non-demanding user category. And that makes it an interesting category to watch.
“Worse, the prospect that a host will index your data and keep that index around for its own purposes should scare all of us.”
This actually worries me. There’s a risk putting trade secrets on Google Spreadsheets, although it beats being hit by a virus. I don’t think Google is interested in changing this, they”ll probably appeal more to people who do mundane stuff.
But SaaS vendors that target business users can easily offer encryption to keep data from prying eyes. You get reliable backup, end of installation hell, not to mention blinding fast security fixes.
[…] As Barry Briggs points out in a discussion about Google Spreadsheet over at IT|Redux(*): Worse, the prospect that a host will index your data and keep that index around for its own purposes should scare all of us. […]
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