Google Spreadsheets: The Online Collaboration Tool from Google

Picture this: One person works on an excel file. Then he sends it to another person for review. Second person reviews the file and sends it back. Then the original author sends it to a larger audience. Each one of them makes changes in their copy, and sends it back to the author. The author then compiles all the changes together and wow the final excel is ready. It just took a few rounds of iterations, a few days of sending back and forth and the final excel is ready. 

I know a lot of you would have wished it might happen in some way like this: Author creates the excel as an online file which is stored at a central repository and authorized users from around the world can access the file. Multiple users work on the file together and final excel is ready in no time. 

Bless you, it is possible now. Google seems to be reading what is in your mind and turning out solutions as per your needs. And the latest from their stable is Google Spreadsheets. Google Spreadsheets is an online spreadsheet. It is a web based spreadsheet product from Google that makes it a lot easier for people to create, store, share and collaborate spreadsheets on the web. 

This is what Google has to say regarding Google Spreadsheets:
“Google Spreadsheets is a web-based spreadsheet product from Google that makes it easier for people to create and share spreadsheets on the web. It enables people to create simple web-based spreadsheets that others can simultaneously update from their own computers. It's a free, secure service that will save people the hassle of manually consolidating spreadsheets from others - a tedious and mind-numbing task.” 

You create a login for Google Spreadsheets and you can immediately start using it. There is no software to download, and it is completely free (and till now, I am surprised to see that it is free from ads too. But that may not last long.)