Google to launch online spreadsheet

Seen as a direct competitor to Microsoft's Excel, Google's effort is bound to create a lot of waves in and around Redmond - regardless of whether Microsoft is ready for it or not - and, yet again, generate a lot more positive press for itself.

Google claims that its ‘Excel killer', will allow multiple users to share and edit spreadsheets in real-time. It says that there is no limit to the number of people with whom one can share his or her spreadsheet.

Users will be able to create new spreadsheets from scratch and import existing ones from CSV and XLS files. Other features include automatic saving, sorting and searching. Users will be able to print by first exporting to HTML.

Charting and macros are the two major features that are not going to be included.

Initially Google Spreadsheet will only be accessible to a small group of people on first-come, first-served basis. Bear in mind that these poor folks will face "grave" limitations. They are not going to be allowed to create more than 100 spreadsheets or import files bigger than 400kb.

If you are interested you can register here.

You can also walk a small tour of Google Spreadsheet here and check out help center here.

We guess a Google online word processor is just be around the corner. µ