Google Sheets doubles calculation speed in Chrome, Edge

Abner Li | Jun 26 2024 - 10:38 am PT

Google is touting significant speed improvements when performing calculations in Sheets on desktop Chrome and Edge.

Google Sheets calculations now “run significantly faster.” This applies to the “simplest of SUM calculations to a complex query” regardless of file size. You’ll notice this improvement when “running formulas, creating pivot tables, using conditional formatting, and more.”

Behind-the-scenes, Google Sheets is using WasmGC for faster code execution. This new web technology (which is an “extension to the existing WebAssembly specification”) replaces JavaScript.

Originally, Google Sheets calculations were performed on server-side. That changed to being local/client-side in 2013. You can find the technical details here. It’s very much an extension of Google’s work to make possible desktop-class web apps.

WasmGC is poised to do for garbage collected languages what Wasm did for C++ (for example, Photoshop or Google Earth), which is to bring them to the web at near native speed. At Google, we believe that WasmGC has the potential to be even more impactful than Wasm because of the popularity of garbage collected languages.

These speed improvements are available when using Google Sheets in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Google will add support for non-Chromium browsers (Safari and Firefox) in the future. This feature is rolled and available for all Workspace/personal users.

Looking ahead, Google is working to “reduce initial load time and improve copy/paste and filter performance.” It joins other recent improvements to smooth scrolling and expanded cell limits.