There's two main differences for me. a) It takes some work to create a new Google doc and set it up for sharing. Etherpad was as simple as pasting the URL. b

There's two main differences for me. a) It takes some work to create a new Google doc and set it up for sharing. Etherpad was as simple as pasting the URL. b) Etherpad shows changes from different users with a different background color. Google Docs is invisible.