Faith + Reason = Truth

The big news today is that Google will be offering paid versions of its online "office suite" (Spreadsheets & Docs are the biggies).  This is not important in terms of market share or a shift in competitive balance, in spite of the fact that Google will be charging $50 while Microsoft's Office suite is several hundred dollars, depending on which version.  Trying online versions of software, such as Google Office or DabbleDB (an online database app), or Zoho's MS Project or PowerPoint clones quickly demonstrates the most important trait of all of them:  they're WAY too slow, basic, and "exposed"-feeling for corporations to implement.  The database programs typically have recommendations to not use datasets of greater than, say, a few thousand records, while many corporate databases are in the millions or even hundreds of millions of records.  And complex calculations and linked sheets in Excel without painful processing and storage delays?  That's just not happening in web app versions.
But it will happen one day, and today's announcement by Google that it is in fact interested in generating revenue streams from offerings other than advertising will have major ramifications across the board.