You may be right in that Google may have no other option other than to seek out users who aren’t wedded to Excel already. But that said I think Google will be very happy if usage and adoption of Google Spreadsheets goes up. Office is Microsoft’s profit engine. Hurting them there, hurts their competitor where it matters.

From a purely techno managerial perspective though, I think Google Apps and Zoho are doing fine. One can not directly build a product like MS Office with killer apps when functionality use of MS Office is hardly 20% by normal users. Rather I guess, one has to build a competitive product first with a distintive market (can be unorthodox) strategy. And I think Flash will come close when user experience is concerned vis-a-vis WebUI compared to AJAX/JS.

Google Apps or for that matter many of its other products such as Docs, Blogs, Scholar, Finance are not what Google is not aiming at, if Marissa Meyer is to be believed from her talk at NewTeeVee. Rather, I think she is quite right when she says that the core is search for Google and rest are clouds covering - so that they can have better monetization. Similarly Amazon with its WebServices - the main business as Jeff Bezos puts it is Booking the Book. Zoho is targetting SME segment and they will do well considering combination of price and functionalities.

Marketers should pay greater attention to early adopters, especially if they are popular personalities that often unintentionally turn evangelists for new products. No other brand communication can be more authentic than a user’s testimony. I saw a post in Gridstone blog where the author expressed delight when a chart from GS platform was used by Om Malik in GIGA OM blog. That joy – of a celebrity blogger using company product – is unmatched and the mileage the company gets out of it easily offsets the beta / free trial costs. Much of the switching costs + switching risk feared by the user will pale if the free trial offer gets coupled with promise of targeted customer support and a money back guarantee to boot, if the product sucked, the chances of which rare since the celebrity had sung its paeans already.

For a product like yours that helps an investor take snap decisions and get in-the-money quicker, no one would want the money back. Just that I wished you brought out an economical on-demand SaaS version and with an India tweak I can try and bring in some of my broker/investor friends as early adopters.