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.

As our site certainly reflects, everything new Google product launch seems to be associated with its ability to "kill" the competition. Putting a "G" in front of anything seems to strike fear in the hearts of investors in competitors, from eBay to Microsoft to AOL. But does Google actually succeed in slaying the knights of Yahoo! with its quiver of wildly-aimed product arrows? An analysis by BusinessWeek suggests, not so much.

Google Talk, for instance, was widely acclaimed as a fearsome challenger to MSN Messenger, AIM, and Yahoo! Messenger. But today, a little less than a year after its launch, the messaging program ranks #10 according to comScore Media Metrix. Social networking site Orkut, hugely popular at launch, is now at less than 1% share in that space (and much though I drooled for an invite, I visited the site once in the past year, although I've frequented many other social networking spots). Google Finance, Google Spreadsheets, and Google blog search have definitely not yet made their home in the "win" column.

The Google new product development process is described by Marissa Mayer as "try a bunch of ideas, refine them, and see what survives." And those that "survive" don't just live, but thrive; Google Maps is now #2 only to Mapquest, and Google News is (in my opinion) the best news search tool available, anywhere.

The big question BusinessWeek asks (and one that no one else is asking right now): does Google even know how to develop a product? The magazine says many of its new services lack "stickiness" and aren't really those that "people want to use." For a company whose product announcements are widely feared and its investors, them's fighting words. Will Google prove to be a conquistador or a schoolyard bully, great at making threats, but quivering inside for fear some competitor might actually stand its ground?