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Great link. However, I don’t know how Joel could see a newcomer can challenge an incumbent, short of reimplementing all features. Certainly, Google Sheets didn
by dfee 3y ago
Great link. However, I don’t know how Joel could see a newcomer can challenge an incumbent, short of reimplementing all features.
Certainly, Google Sheets didn’t do that. Nor has airtable (valuation considerations aside, it has seen some adoption).
In a new category, or a new market, there is no benchmark. So that’s the east case. But sometimes new products do displace old products, and sometimes just by distribution or pricing at the cost of features.
So how do you reconcile that, Joel?!
- NavinF 3y agoFair point, but Sheets hasn't replaced Excel. Sheets only competes in the in-browser market and Sheets by itself does not make money for Google. If you go back a few years, Microsoft was the 80%-er that lacked features (notably real-time collaboration) whereas Google offered an entire suite of software with free real-time collaboration. People pay $6/mo to get the entire suite for their company. Gsuite is not comparable to the "lite" word processors that Joel was talking about or the open-source tools like FreeCAD that I was talking about. Both are objectively worse than their paid counterparts and extremely limited in functionality. Also worth mentioning that Sheets has competition in this space now that in-browser 365 Excel is free. Tho neither is feature-complete vs desktop Excel