Well it can't, but it doesn't matter in the way your colleagues thought it would.

Excel is a much better product than Google Sheets, but having the better product doesn't mean having the winning product.

Some times, there's one feature that's so useful it justifies the lack of many others. Google Docs is a terrible word processor compared to Word or even Pages, but being able to edit a document at the same time as someone else (with full features and little friction—IIRC Pages doesn't support Track Changes while collaborating) is so useful that I end up using Google Docs anyway.

Whats most annoying to me such "onlinedness"/"cloudness" that people (myself including) associate with web apps are not really dependant on the front end being web based. You should be able to build as good collaboration etc features as easily with native apps as with web tech. In mobile the the lines are blurrier, but on desktop there feels to be division between offline native apps and online web apps, with very few bridging the gap with native online apps.

Your comment also showcases how IMO a lot of software companies don't compete on tech. They compete on UX [1].

When I first came on HN and learned about YC's motto (build something users love) this idea was reaffirmed.

[1] Google optimizes for a collaborative quick spreadsheet program (handy for consumers), and as other comments say, Microsoft focuses on pro spreadsheet use (e.g. finance).

I won't say that they compete on UX, more that they address different needs from different users groups. Some users need collaboration, others need niche math functions.

We switched from google docs to Dropbox paper. It has one very useful feature which would prevent me from moving back: tracking todos with name and date. Every day I get an email which lists all upcoming todo deadlines across all paper documents. Super convenient way to track your todos.

How is google docs a terrible word editor? Do you mean that it lacking the advanced but rarely used features of word?

Yep, WordArt...

Honestly though, I do think Word captured a really nice standard feature set. And docs does a darn fine job of matching that set one to one. The image placement and handling can be a little wonky at times (at least the last time that I used it) but that's what one gets for trying to handle it all in html/javascript/canvas? For what it does, it's a mighty fine product.

Conspicuously missing for me:

- Always-visible word count (added recently, but missing for nearly a decade)

- Custom text styles—you can modify the existing ones, but not create new ones with new names

I do believe a browser app can do pretty much the same as a native one, but I agree that the important bit is they didn't see the big picture: mostly free tech, no installation, safer, low mantainance, out-of-the-box truly client server, etc.

Actually the web now is 100X more beautiful and responsive than at that time. I mean what you can do with an intranet server, not the radioactive media monstrosities.

Not really a spreadsheet person, I can believe Excel is better than Sheets. But is web vs native the reason?

There's browser-based versions of excel and probably every other component in office. It's always clunkier in my opinion, and loses some features or other depending on what it is. The added layer of security also adds annoyances (like getting constantly kicked out after a period of inactivity) and new bugs.

To the user I'd say it's a trade-off that gains you little or nothing and loses a lot over native apps. The benefits of switching to browser and cloud based apps go to the organization you work for the and software companies selling the products.

The web is the ultimate "just write code" platform there ever was, literally everything that's not your PWA and API is handled by someone else in the chain.

Excel is still king in finance and much of other demanding cases.

Google Sheets ate the lower end, though; it's a bit like iOS vs Android.

> Excel is a much better product than Google Sheets, but having the better product doesn't mean having the winning product.

Much better product? Sheets takes literally seconds to download and install and runs on all your devices. Also it automatically syncs your data between devices and sharing data with other people is as easy as sharing a website. These are very important features in my view and makes Sheets into a better product than Excel. A power user might have different opinions, but to me writing sheet.new in my browser is just so much more convenient.

It's been possible for multiple people to edit an Excel file simultaneously for a long time. Since 2017 (at least) you can use OneDrive as the file location, so you get all those syncing and sharing benefits you mentioned. The newer Click-to-Run installer takes about 2 minutes to get the app to a usable state, and if that's just too long, there's always https://office.live.com/start/Excel.aspx

Excel also has a web client that can be downloaded in seconds and has more features than Google Sheets.

I didn't know that, pretty neat. One feature it has is that it picks my local language and I see no option to change it to English like I have everywhere else, so I still wont use it. I really dislike internationalization efforts, they are often so bad that it makes everything a lot harder to use for non-Americans than if they just got the same page as Americans.

Too many features.

Why are you comparing sheets to a desktop app when the comparable product is excel 365? (Which handily blows sheets out the water)

> this situation hasn't improved much in twenty years

It's gotten much worse. Now you have iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, wed, and Linux(?). In 2000, you had Windows. You couldn't do anything interesting on mobile, Web 2.0 (cringe) wasn't a thing, and Mac's market share was about 3%.

It's pretty weird to me to try to picture Microsoft's monopoly as a better situation than the current one?

I think the point they were trying to make is that in a world with platform monopoly, just making your app for that platform is a logical path for a developer