Google apps and Microsoft’s file format

Kevin Day, February 21st, 2008

Yet another post about a Google app and Joel on Software… anyways…

I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but Google Spreadsheets always seems to be a little bit faster and snappier each time I use it. Right now I’m working from a coffee shop with spotty internet connection, but it’s working as good as ever.

That made me think about how Google must know absolutely every tiny trick about optimizing Javascript in ways that no other company can even fathom. It seems like a good parallel to how Joel says Microsoft was light-years ahead of most other software companies for knowing how to write the fastest code possible on the hardware of the time.

Maybe in 10 years we’ll see Google release their specifications for how they store and update a spreadsheet and complain about how complex it is. However it’ll be that way because it includes hacks to work around IE6’s bugs.

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