Google Office is here

I've written about Writely in this blog, first as an independent company and later as a newly acquired part of Google. I've used writely, personally, over a couple of months and though it is, obviously, not on par with Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org's Writer it is very much functional, usable and useful.

After acquiring Writely, Google has made generally available its Calendar service, which along with its GMail service offer a good measure of the functionality found in Microsoft's Outlook email and groupware client. Now, a new service, Google Spreasheets comes into the light of day and having used it for a pair of days I can say that it, also, is quite usable and useful.

For all practical purposes, an individual who has access to these services for free has no need to acquire a license of Microsoft Office for their personal use. Though I would even begin to consider comparing functionality between Excel and Google Spreadsheets, I find that for simple, personal finance and budget controls Google's service is quite sufficient.

When taken into consideration as a set of applications, instead of separate services, GMail, Calendar, Writely and Spreadsheets form a sizeable chunk of a personal productivity suite and offer free online storage for your information, making it available to you from where ever in the world you might be. For all practical purposes I think it is safe to say that Google Office is already here.

What's next? Humm.... Anybody see a startup doing an online presentation service?