Google spreadsheets?

CNET has reported today on Google Spreadsheets, a collaborative tool that apparently has gone into beta. Like collaborative word processing, an online spreadsheet is markedly less featured but has a key ingredient - the ability for multiple people to work on or simply view the same spreadsheet at one time, irrespective of location. Sure you can email an Excel file around, but with this idea we have real time collaboration. Not a new idea but with Google's weight behind it it could start something happening in the online application space.

Good news for the online application servers - it build market awareness. Good for Google, it broadens their range. Bad for Microsoft. However I smell a niche only at this stage.