Google Docs - Now here is an application that would be useful to just about everyone and not crammed full of annoying advertising. I was expecting minimal level word processing and was greatly surprised to find all the standard tools set up in an easy to use format.

The most useful application that I can see from my experience is for students. I don't know how many times the students in my household have needed to print an assignment (that was due the next day, of course) only to have the printer fail for one reason or another. Okay, you say, just put it on a disk and take it to another printer. Only to get there and find that the disk was corrupt, or the other computer doesn't have the same version of whatever, or various other scenarios. Google Docs would certainly help to prevent at least some of this stress. All it needs is an application to encourage students not to leave their assignments to the last minute!
Hmmm - Google Parent? - no, that would be too creepy ; )

This blog post was easy to create in Google Docs and just as easy to post to my Blogger account especially since both are Google applications. And the ability to share documents with other people would be a great benefit to volunteer organizations where expensive word processing packages are out of reach or family members who live apart from each other and may not share the same word processing software.