Google introduces online spreadsheet application in another swipe at Microsoft

While Google has hinted at not really being a direct competitor to Microsoft, it has a strange way of showing it. As Sarah blogged on yesterday, Google has just announced a spreadsheet web-based application (as opposed to a locally-installed program) that will do away with the non-centralized editing that generally has to be done with Microsoft Excel.

Who hasn't created an Excel worksheet that needed to be sent around to many people as an email attachment? Google hopes to bypass this wary situation and create a spreadsheet program that is web-based and centralized for sharing among as many people as possible. Although Microsoft has hinted at online collaboratin with its Office suite, either it's been s dismal failure in implementation, or this feature has been marketed really badly. Up steps Google to bring online spreadsheet functionality to the collaborative environment, then.

In fact, Google says that the sharing aspect is central to the new web-based application's reason for existing in the first place. With Google's acquisition of online word processor Writely, and with Gmail and Google Calendar now being available, it seems that Google is systematically taking on Microsoft's core consumer products one by one. Although the new Google spreadsheet application will be available in a limited release at first, expect this new product to be live to the general public sometime this year.