Interesting set of articles.

I have always thought that Google could really shine if it could bring together "business-quality" applications and services to the masses. To me, one thing that applications like Spreadsheets, Documents, and Gmail prove is that you can have very useful tools that get the job done without resorting to feature bloated apps. No, these kinds of online apps will not please EVERYONE, but really, if you look at how many features are available in apps like Word, Excel, and Outlook, and then assess how many of those features average business users really use, you'd probably find that it is THAT subset on which Google seems to be focusing.

If you need more sophisticated features, then by all means, go offline and use the power of more robust applications, but for the majority of personal and business users and uses, Google's approach can be VERY affective.

I use Google for almost everything.
I'm a student, and I write up my projects, etc, on GDocs, I use GMail as my MSN handle and all of my emailing.
I use Google Notebook from school to save websites/passwords/ideas down so I can continue later. I used to use CNN for my news source, but it was a bit biased (I'm Canadian) so now I use GNews. Picasa has all of my pictures, and GCalendar keeps me in line.
I would still love GDrive however...