Between the Sheets

Why Google Sheets matters

Excel is Microsoft’s last salvation. It is, hands down, the best piece of consumer software they have. From the newbie to the power user, from planning a wedding to Wall Street analytics, everything starts with the humble Excel sheet. Powerpoint, Outlook, Word (POW) — none of them have this loyalty. Designers love Keynote over Powerpoint, sales people love Salesforce over Outlook, and writers…love almost everything (including paper) except Word. Yes, the silent majority still toil in POW. Few love it and even fewer utilize a small fraction of the features that make them “feature complete.”

And this is why Google’s upgraded Sheets matter, with the headlining feature of bigger and faster sheets. Why? Excel is more than just another app in the suite. It is, especially for finance departments, an absolute necessity. In my own office, the only people with Windows machines (out of hundreds of employees) are finance people. And the only reason they use them is Excel. Excel is the linchpin to the entire enterprise, the one irreplaceable tool.

I don’t think today’s announcement achieves that. Excel is an amazing application and will not be trivial to reproduce. Nonetheless, today’s announcement undoubtedly demonstrates that Google is not planning on giving up this fight any time soon.