Well it looks like Google is back up to it with the pre-pre-release of Google Spreadsheets. Given the fact that I haven't gotten into the preview yet I can't say from personal experience but this looks like a killer app (literally and figuratively).

Particularly intriguing about this offering is the heavy focus on collaboration , something that feels oddly missing from the recent Google Notebook. So far I really like what I see in the works and I hope Google brings this approach to all their applications.

Many have said but none have been able to prove that Google is writing a web-based office suite that would compete with Microsoft, the first move was their acquisition of Writely , and now this. Google has positioned itself with a partial office suite that would easily compete with Microsoft. Let's review:

• Gmail + Calendar + Chat + Notebook = MS Outlook
• Writely = MS Word
• Google Spreadsheets = MS Excel
• Google Pages = MS Frontpage

The only things that I see are a presentation package, a database package, and a flowchart package. I don't doubt those are in the works. Go Google! I do hope I get into the alpha soon...