I recently talked to an MBA student. Like many of his peers, he uses a lot of Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) services.

However, he was fairly disappointed with Google's spreadsheet. He told me, "I spent a lot of time with it," he said, "but it didn't have the features I needed."

Well, that may change soon. This week, Google purchased an upstart spreadsheet company, iRows.

Yes, iRows is a great product. But, like many Web 2.0 offerings, it has been no easy feat to get critical scale.

And, while Google denies that it is making a move against Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s Office, it does look like the opposite is true. Then again, it's a juicy market -- and in need of some old-fashioned competition.

Interestingly enough, by the end of the year, the iRows' service will be shut-down and the data deleted. What to do? Of course, if you want to save your data, you will have to export it to the Google spreadsheet.

You can check out more from the iRows blog.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.

Google trying to excel at spreadsheets originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.