When Dan Bricklin created the world’s first spreadsheet — VisiCalc debuted on the Apple II in 1979 — Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were six years old and presumably mastering the intricacies of first-grade finger-painting.
So the question sprang to mind this morning upon reading that Google now offers its own spreadsheet, albeit an early beta version of limited function: What does Bricklin think of these young whippersnappers and their incursion onto the technology turf he defined? Bricklin’s a big-time blogger, so I knew where to look for an answer:
“I’ve read some of the reports that Google is announcing a spreadsheet tomorrow,” Bricklin writes. “Cool! It will be interesting to see another take on this genre though scary to be compared to the product of a huge company with billions of dollars. I wonder if they’ll make it Open Source like wikiCalc and let you run it on your own servers.”
Bricklin’s blog can bring you up to speed on wikiCalc, too.
So try the Google spreadsheet if you’re so inclined, but if you’re seeking more of an old-school experience you might consider downloading the first version of VisiCalc built for the IBM PC, circa 1981. Bricklin insists it’ll still run on today’s machines and all 27,250 bytes can be downloaded here.
