I’ve written the Google Lab’s spreadsheet team (through their feedback mechanism) with this suggestion but would like to share my idea here as well.
Basically, I think there’s only one feature missing that would make Google Spreadsheets the complete Excel killer.
What would make it truly an Excel killer is to allow one to reference data in other public spreadsheets just as one currently references data in another sheet in the same spread.
Right now you can enter a formulae containing a reference to another sheet so: =ABS(sheet2!C7)
What I suggest is something like:
=ABS(http://mydomain/public/spread1#sheet2!C7).
To make it even more interesting, I suggest that a ‘public spreadsheet’ is any URL which returns a XML spreadsheet. So you can essentially reference any appropriate web-service.
Suppose you want your spreadsheet results in up-to-date Euro, simply reference the current Euro conversion rate, for example:
=SUM(C2:C18) * http://xe.com/reference/convert?from=USD&to=EUR!A1
Note: This is a hypothetical URL of course.
This could also allow a manager to build a spreadsheet that utilizes his subordinates’ spreadsheets, recursively creating a hierarchical tree that represent an entire organization and updated dynamically. Naturally this would require some sort of security policy etc., maybe Google can sell its application suite to corporations as an appliance?… But only once they get the managers hooked on Google Spreadsheet for other things first… ;)
I believe this suggestion could really leverage the online-ness of the Google Spreadsheet application. I would appreciate any feedback!
Technorati tags: Google, Excel.
