Google continues to take over the world, but in a good, non-evil way. With the coming of Google Spreadsheets you can now do pretty much everything an Office package lets you do, but for free via the Web. There's Writely for your word processing, Google Spreadsheets for your.. er.. spreadsheets, Google Calendar for your diary and project planning, and GMail for your email. There are also lots of other Google services of course, including free voice calls over GTalk and Notebook, and fantastically useful bookmarking thing. Lots more at Google Labs.

I'm no fan of corporations but this can only be a good thing for us all. Thanks to Google there will be no need to ever 'upgrade' Windows again, or even use Windows. You can use anything with a web browser to do all of this stuff, be it a PC, Mac, TV or whatever. There will be no more having to buy Microsoft Office or having to get annoyed, as I do, when someone sends you a Word document assuming 'everyone must have Word'. It's the beginning of the end of a period of monopolies in computing. Once people get their heads around working with Web applications no single company can monopolise your 'office' requirements again. Don't like Google's offerings? There will be dozens other other Web-based apps to choose from since they can't lock you in. It's good news indeed.