The easiest way to think of Google’s new document and spreadsheet offering is as a kind of "Office lite" with a built-in "wiki" element. To the uninitiated, that means it’s like a simplified version of Microsoft’s Word and Excel, which allows files to be published online, enabling others to access and edit them.

Like the ubiquitous products on which Google has built its name – the search engine and Google Earth – the programs are simply laid out, easy to use, and intuitive.

All the basic functions familiar to Microsoft users – cutting and pasting, a choice of fonts, colours, text size – are there, as well as a range of formatting features such as left and right justification, and bullet points. The uniqueness comes in the ease of online collaboration, which will enable staff in different offices to work on documents together and see changes in something approaching real time.

Once a document is created, a "collaborate" button enables the user to choose the e-mail addresses of those he or she wishes to have access to the file. When "publish" is pressed, the collaborators are invited to a website where they can see the document and make changes.

This "wiki" format takes away the hassle of e-mailing around large files, as well as enabling users to keep track of changes via an "edit history" function.

The corporate edition announced today may differ slightly, but the consumer edition, which has been available for several months, also includes the following endearing features:

– an easy registration process (all you need is an e-mail address and password, not even a login)

– a more intuitive interface (when you click "insert row" in the spreadsheet, for instance, it asks whether you want it to go above or below, as distinct from Excel, where you have to remember the default – which is above, incidentally)

– the ability to export files to their Microsoft-equivalent formats – helpful if you’re working with non-Google users.

– an efficient "help" function, which has – not surprisingly – an easily searchable database with well laid-out topics

There are some drawbacks. The formatting features are reduced, which will be felt by those creating highly sophisticated documents, and there are fewer fonts – 20 in the word processor, and only seven in the spreadsheet – as opposed to the dozens available in Word and Excel.

But other omissions in this cleaner, simpler version of Office – such as the lack of a "readability tester", a Microsoft curiosity which rates the "reading ease" of a document according to the "Flesch-Kincaid" formula – will be less sorely missed.

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