Around the World with Google Spreadsheet

I have siblings living in Asia as well as the West Coast. So recently we were having a discussion on my parent's desire to move to a slightly larger house.

Being one of the geeky siblings, I created an online spreadsheet using Google Docs. In a few minutes, I had an online spreadsheet which allowed us all to view the nitty gritty details-- how much it costs to sell a house, and how much it costs to purchase another house. Email can only go so far when communicating with multiple individuals in multiple timezones. So having an online spreadsheet gave everyone a clearer picture.

Google is an example of a company that provides products that fill the needs of users. In this case, providing a way to share, edit, and publish documents EASILY online. The google geeks are certainly not the first ones to do so, but they have the infrastructure to provide this reliably, and in this case, for free to individuals. Google charges companies a modest fee if they want to use these apps (gmail, calendar, docs and spreadsheets) in-house.