Google took step towards offering its own online Office-type product this week with the news that it has merged two of its online tools, the Writely word processor and the Google Spreadsheets service launched earlier this year.

The result is Google Docs & Spreadsheets, with the name Writely and the standalone versions of the products likely to be retired.

Google announced the offering as "one place where you can create, store, share and publish your documents and spreadsheets online".

"Keeping your documents and spreadsheets online is a treat because you can access them from anywhere via a web browser," the statement continued.

"You can also get feedback and contributions from others you invite without having to email copies of files because the current version is always online."

Google has revised the respective Writely and Google Spreadsheets interfaces so they are "more identical than fraternal", and unified the two with one log-in, one help centre and a list that shows all the user's documents and spreadsheets online.