I don’t understand the need for these side quests. Microsoft has a 40 year lead in spreadsheets. You are not going to dethrone them no matter how good your AI’s code is. And no one is asking you for an excel competitor. Fixing the million problems in existing products that users have already raised (aka the boring work) is a much better use of resources.

They are building a walled garden platform the same way Apple and Microsoft does. This isn't at all a surprising move.

When Google Docs were out, Microsoft already had a 20-year lead. So shouldn't have they made Google Doc?

And the story repeats. Google had a 20-year lead in search and LLM definitely has threatened it.

I don't see them as side quests but rather as a complement to what they offer.

A typical workflow is: connect via MCP to some data source. Do some stats, transformations, etc. Put the data in a format that Claude understands or will understand better later. Make a UI/story out of it. Keep track of your "things" through visualizations.

Been using this worlflow extensively now. This is their easy wall garden.

It's a desperation move. They're listing because they're out of runway, they're trying to extend the runway.

Tell that to google sheets or google docs?? At some point you want to easily interoperate with a document or spreadsheet artifact. There aren't great drop in solutions while keeping everything within managed context. Compiling to and from docx or xls files don't make sense. It makes the most sense to spin up your own. What do you expect them to do instead?

40 year lead in bloat and legacy cruft maybe

> You are not going to dethrone them no matter how good your AI’s code is.

They absolutely are. Maybe not quickly (let's face it, Excel users are not sprightly), but this is absolutely going to displace Gsuite, and any Excel users who were thinking of moving to it.

I expect Google will respond.