Google Spreadsheets Adds Pivot Tables, Welcome to Google Business Intelligence
I am a long-time user of Google Docs (no, I'm not saying, 'I'm cooler than you'...just setting up these comments) and have been continually impressed with the functionality that the Google engineering team has built and layered onto their acquisitions.
Being a bit of an analytics groupie, the recent addition of pivot tables makes me absolutely giddy. I've only used the functionality briefly, but it truly is an impressive enhancement; brilliant processing married to a dynamic, engaging UI.
I can now remove my 'the feature it doesn't have is pivot tables' caveat from my evangelical rantings on those who are not familiar with Google Spreadsheets.
While some of the more advance features of pivot tables do not appear to be available (e.g. summary functions) I'm sure this is the first step in the continued revolution.
The Future As I See It
From a business perspective, I'm wondering about further implications that this advancement has to the collective Google collection of applications. For example, what about a powerful integration between Google Spreadsheets and Analytics. Rather than connect the Google Analytics API to an Excel-based processing engine, what if we could perform advanced analysis within Google Spreadsheets...instant, on-demand Business Intelligence.
The same application could find its way into Adwords for PPC/contextual/retargeting efforts. Talk about an even more powerful marketing toolkit for small to mid-sized businesses.
Well done Google Team.
