It has been noted here that the world's most widely used database is Microsoft Excel. This is because enterprise software is about top-down control of workflow and processes -- it's solidified corporate policy/politics! As a result, enterprise software sucks. In order to work around maladapted restrictions imposed by enterprise software, the most productive workers take their processes and automation into spreadsheets like Excel, where they can adapt quickly to changing conditions. Often, the most successful of these processes are then built into enterprise applications, to become the new status quo.
Google wants small and transitional medium sized businesses to outsource much of their IT to them and to run their spreadsheets on Google's apps. Google hopes that this will allow them to do with ad-hoc processes in spreadsheets what they did with web links: organize and unify a huge collection of disparate linkages to create value. When a company has all of its spreadsheets in Google apps, users will be able to link data in disparate spreadsheets. This network of links will be subject to analysis. New business processes will be absorbed from the ad-hoc spreadsheets into the enterprise more quickly and efficiently. This will have tremendous value to companies, especially small and medium sized ones, some of which will grow into giant conglomerates. If this works, Google stands to dwarf the achievements of Microsoft.
EDIT: This remote desktop stuff is just a selling point in support of larger goals.