Google has quietly launched its new Web-based spreadsheet software today, currently in a limited test run over at Google Labs.  Whether this is the Microsoft Excel killer some people might be looking forward to, I have no clue.  Unfortunately, you must sign up to have access and I'm still waiting for my invite to come into my Gmail.  But, it does have one very unique feature that really caught my eye - after you save your document on the web, you can share it with people on your Google Talk contacts by entering their email.  Once shared, they can open the document at the same time as you and you can *both* make changes at once.  To me, this is the holy grail of office applications - integrated support of live collaboration.  Once the document is complete, you can download the Excel file (XLS format) document to keep.

This is the first direct stab at a Microsoft product.  Well, technically I guess you could consider Google Page Creator to be a competitor with Microsoft Front Page, but that might be kind of a stretch since Page Creator doesn't come close to the same feature set of Front Page.  Either way, you can bet this means war.  Computer software is about to change forever :-)

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