Somehow I missed the announcements of Google Spreadsheets. Not that I am that interested anyway, but usually releases like this are surrounded with a lot of hype.
Well, Google Spreadsheets is all you can expect of it – a web-based spreadsheet application, which is very similar in look and feel to Microsoft Excel and a billion of other spreadsheet applications. It features all the usual functionality – cells, formatting, formulas, etc. You can import your existing spreashits from a comma-separated values files (CSV) or Microsoft Excel.
The additional bonus of using web-based applications as opposite to system applications is easier sharing. Google realizes this and provides a handy interface to do so.
If only I had any task that would need a spreadsheet…
The only time when I use spreadsheet software is when they send me some data in this format or they want to get a report back as Excel file. Yaks. I don’t understand why business workers are so dependent on it!
To the point – I wouldn’t use a web-based spreadsheet soft, because the files tend to be big and uploading/downloading them would be unnecessary overhead.
That’s probably because you aren’t a “business worker” yourself. I can imagine a whole lot of situations where a spreadsheet can be useful. It’s just that I don’t usually come across these situations myself.
The point of web-based application is that you can store your data at the central location and easily share it with others. In this case, you won’t have to upload/download files that often – only when you’ll need them somewhere without Internet access.
The additional bonuses to consider are backups, license management, etc. Also, with a constant trend towards cheaper bandwidth, your consideration of overhead traffic won’t matter that much.