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Google Docs is growing stronger - so much so that I at first thought Hitwise's assessment was another April Fool's joke.  But visits to the Google Docs site have indeed more than doubled in the last year.

"Market share of US Internet visits to Google Docs was up 2.5 times year on year last week," wrote Heather Hopkins.  "Visits are up 27% in the past three months."  Toss in the news about Google Docs's offline availability, and it seems like Microsoft Office is just weeks away from being overthrown.

 Google Docs

Unfortunately (for Google), this is where reality steps in.  Hopkins also reported, "Google Docs received 0.0166% of all US Internet visits last week (week to 22nd March 2008).  It ranked #290 among All Categories of websites."  And when such small numbers are involved, tiny changes can create misleading figures.

Google Docs is still ahead of most competitors, of course - Open Office, Zoho, Edit Grid, and Think Free all trail far behind in terms of traffic, according to Hitwise.  It's just that any sort of mainstream popularity remains elusive.

We'll see what happens next year.  Maybe Google Docs will once again experience some double take-inducing growth.