Google Spreadsheet: First Look

June 6th, 2006

I got a response from Google Spreadsheet and have spent about 10 minutes poking around in it. First off, I’m impressed by what can be done in a browser these days (Firefox) in that I can hardly tell it’s not a desktop application.

But it’s definitely a basic spreadsheet program. You can sort. You can choose from seven web-friendly fonts. You can put numbers in and get numbers out. A strong point is a large amount of mathematical formulas (Sum, Count, Average, Min, Max, Product and more). Another is its autosave ability. Yet another potentially interesting feature is the collaborative sharing options.

Pretty much all of the intuitive UI conventions are here, copy, paste (even with keyboard commands) and to add cells to a formula, you just click on them. You can select multiple cells. You can also select rows and columns. Also, the welcome “Insert” is present if you want to move one row from one place to another.

The downsides: I couldn’t figure out how to do cell borders. My designer side wants to format the information better for other people to understand. Just being able to color cells isn’t enough.

Second downside: This is a really basic spreadsheet. It’s no match for Excel on a desktop by any means. You’d have to find small basic projects to fit this tool.

Bigger downside: I wouldn’t feel keen on putting sensitive data online in any form. I know it’s mostly paranoia, since so many financial transactions take place digitally nowadays. I wouldn’t want to put the company books in the hands of Google, or even my own budgets. At the very least, maybe Google could do the “https://” thing after the initial sign-in to reassure while working in Spreadsheet.

I’m continuously impressed with Google’s offerings, although in retrospect I haven’t used their web page creator at all in the past few months. I do however use Gmail daily, and am now interested in trying out Writely.

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