Sometimes I get the notion that everytime someone sneezes at Google, the snot shows up in 50 blogs the next day. Everyone seems to love imagining Google as the underdog in a boxing match with Microsoft, and Microsoft even seems to like playing into the role. At any rate, everyone is talking about Google’s New Spreadsheet, though the reactions are somewhat mixed. What’s really exciting about the project for me are the collaboration features, which would make designing things like this Game System Matrix a heckuva lot easier. I’ve also been using Google’s web word processor, Writely, for several months and find it more than adequate for the task, and of course Gmail is my preferred mail client. I’ve been growing more and more tempted to ditch my Thunderbird and just use Gmail exclusively.

Is Google aiming to eventually produce an “online office” with all the functionality of a Microsoft Office or Open Office suite?