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This is Larry Magid, CBS News Technology Analyst.
Millions of people around the world use Microsoft office, which comes with Microsoft Word for creating documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, Outlook e-mail and other applications. But now Google is offering some of those same applications with its free, web-based services. Google launched it four years ago. But recently it launched a free spreadsheet program and word processing program that are acquired from another company. Together, they are now called Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Well, neither the word processing or spreadsheet program is as full- featured as Microsoft's offering, they do provide users with the basic tools they need to write and calculate. Perhaps more important, they also allow you to work from home, office or the road without having you save your files, because they are saved and backed up on Google secure servers. They are also easy to share, facilitating collaboration between people in different parts of the world. Of course, if you are not online, you don't have access. So forget about writing that letter or polishing off that spreadsheet at 37,000 feet.
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