How about… 3D spreadsheets, man. You finish tallying up all your credits and debits, and then wham! You’re sprung into another dimension. It’s Google Tensorsheets, man, Microsoft won’t even know what hit them.
This is what got me into programming way back when. I was a recruiter and doing things in spreadsheets, and I was like, I need a way to link data in a 3rd dimension, not just on the x and y axis. And then I was like actually if 3 dimensions why not 4 or more? So I asked on like, stackoverflow or something, do spreadsheets like that exist, and someone answered "you're basically describing a database with linking between tables," which led to me rabbitholing, learning more, getting into programming, and changing careers.
> Microsoft would be stuck in the same dilemma if, say, someone came up up with a futuristic-looking disruption in the spreadsheet space and Google Sheets was quick to adapt to it.
I feel like they basically are. It’s probably been close to a decade and Google’s online collaborative features in their office suite is far and above what Microsoft has managed to cobble together.
For Google – whose entire business is tied up in that one search box – it is a very different equation. Any reduction of consumer confidence in their search engine is an existential threat to the company. Changes have to be rolled out slowly and with an immense amount of deliberation and testing.
Microsoft would be stuck in the same dilemma if, say, someone came up up with a futuristic-looking disruption in the spreadsheet space and Google Sheets was quick to adapt to it.