Google Spreadsheets finally added charts. This feature has been developed for many months and was one of the biggest lacks from Google's spreadsheet application.

You can create more types of charts: columns, bars, lines, pie, scatter, add labels and a legend. Just select the columns you want to plot and click on the new chart icon. After inserting the chart in the spreadsheet, you can save it as a PNG image or edit it.

Google Charts don't require additional plugins installed in your Firefox, Ie or Opera browser.
Officially Opera isn't supported so you may have a hard time to make it work smooth.

"In November 2006, I saw this product being used in meetings at Google…It’s been in development for quite some time now, although it was still very bare-bones then. It sounds like their recent acquisition of Tonic was made for some essential technology component (probably “Download as PowerPoint” or something) — Tonic won’t be in charge of building the core product- that one should mainly be ready and in testing now."

Google has also announced the acquisition of Tonic Systems to power the presentations product.

written by Florin C.