5 ms·

Welcome to 2022, Google Docs. Unfortunately there's still a long way to Notion or Dropbox Paper.

chippiewill 5y ago
It's utterly bizarre just how much Google docs seems to have dropped the ball. It really feels like they haven't developed the product in the past 10 years. This is the first significant feature change that I can recall in a very long time other than minor UI tweaks.
- jfoster 5y ago
  Considering the fates of other Google products, that's a great outcome. At least it didn't end up like Gchat or Google Reader.
- slig 5y ago
  I think it's great as this gives new companies the opportunity to eat their lunch.
- Already__Taken 5y ago
  I'm heavy into Google and hard a lot of gsuite education deployed. I was always agasp at how Google just doesn't improve gdocs/sheets sometimes at all for years. why do the two programs have different table/cell markup up and even options...
  - Andrex 5y ago
    The table limitations in Docs are really the biggest thing that grind my gears about the service.
- user-the-name 5y ago
- samwillis 5y ago
  81% of Googles revenue is from advertising, only 7.5% is from Cloud Services (Google Workplaces and Google Cloud Platform) I think its fairly safe to assume that the majority of that cloud revenue is from their Cloud Platform, not Workplaces. So it wouldn't surprise me if its as little as 1-2% of revenue (it could easily be less than 1%). There is no surprise then that it is such a low priority for them. It's mostly a box ticking exercise to ensure that they can sell more stuff to enterprises and hold Microsoft back a little.
  - adrianomartins 5y ago
    I totally understand this vision, google docs, google sites, google drive must be really down in Google's priority list. Heck, Google Meet was down there up until two years ago. The problem I think is that, little by little, users start stepping outside the Google bubble and they start to realize that there's clear benefits. I used to be a 100% google person, then we started using dropbox paper for documents, notion for company wiki (and personal notes too), tandem for video calls. In 2022, our company is using Google only for email, calendar, and sheets. Two years ago we'd be crazy to even think about that. We're up to the point were it wouldn't seem crazy to go with the Microsoft suite, to be honest.
    - samwillis 5y ago
      > We're up to the point were it wouldn't seem crazy to go with the Microsoft suite, to be honest. I think for a lot of companies not going with Office is crazy, Google docs isn't good enough, and who's wants to have 7-10 different suppliers for different products (email, calendar, sheets, docs, presentations, wiki, chat, video). Far easer to just buy one cohesive system. There is probably an opportunity for one of the larger players to acquire the others and move back towards a cohesive platform. There would be push back but I suspect it would pay off. Imagine Airtable, Notion and Slack under one operation.
  - luibelgo 5y ago
    2021 revenue was $257 billion, 1% revenue is a lot of money still
  - 5y ago
- theptip 5y ago
  Agreed. It’s really weird; because of the bundling advantage, they don’t have to be better than Notion, they just need to be good enough that the convenience factor wins out. It’s also frustrating because if Google played to their strengths, Docs could be best-in-class; the real problem that everybody is struggling with is internal knowledge management. Why can’t Google build me a privately indexed knowledge graph of my internal docs, then let me use Google’s search to answer questions? It’s insane that this is not their product strategy for Docs. This should be “easy” to wire up, they have all of the tech already for google.com search. People like notion because it is easier to structure nested Wiki docs quickly, but you still have the same problems eventually of needing to curate your knowledge base, and things becoming too hard to find past a certain scale. Instead we get Data Loss Prevention and a bunch of other box-ticking features which, sure, are how you close enterprise deals to displace Microsoft. But I think they are sleeping on their vulnerability to disruption plays from the bottom of the market, and they need to invest more in building a moat here. Make the free/SMB customers delighted, and you starve potential competitors of the oxygen they need to grow into a competitor at the enterprise level.
  - Lealen 5y ago
    It's probably not available because someone decided that it should be only available for enterprise customers, take a look: https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/ https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/
    - theptip 5y ago
      Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that feature (and I pay for Enterprise gsuite, so that tells you something about either my attention to Google product details, or the level of advertisement of this feature :) I do wonder if this is actually building a semantic knowledge graph of the content, vs. just providing a dynamic facade/aggregator for other apps’ search APIs, and doing “old style” text indexing/searching within Workspace services. It looks like the former based on a cursory read of the docs. It would be more challenging to build a knowledge graph over {drive,slack,Jira,…} documents, but if they just build a knowledge graph within Workspace that could provide more reason to use Docs vs. Notion/Confluence, or Google Chat over Slack. So there is actually a strong product/market reason to build this as a native feature even if you can’t solve it for other apps.
- pradn 5y ago
  A feeling of progress is hard to convey to users if the iceberg is mostly invisible. I assume much of the work on Google Docs is harder to see like backend improvements/scalability, rendering compatibility across platforms, file-format compatibility with MS Word (both being able to read/write with high fidelity and supporting the useful features). But if we look at release notes for the past year, we see a sequence of smaller features.[1] These include ML-driven quick replies for comments, being easily add smart links to people/docs/lists, being able to add image watermarks, and Japanese grammar suggestions. These announcements are in small blog posts [2], and are usually covered by the tech media [3] (largely summaries with a bit of flavor or - cheekily - instructions on how to turn features off). It is hard to feel like there's major progress in Google Docs when features, even useful ones, trickle out like this. Perhaps the big release every year model isn't that bad, for communication purposes. It's just not in the DNA of Google or any online service, however. If you look at the roadmap for Google Workspace, it's very much about collaboration.[4] This plays to the brand and strength of the online-first vision of Google Apps - it's easy to jump in and collaborate on docs, the suite works well together. I think companies that choose Google Workspace do so to transform the way they work. It's not really about just replicating the Microsoft experience on the web. That said, I think Microsoft has done an amazing job pulling their apps to the web and adding collaboration/sync. Their online version of Word has basically no caveats, and their realtime editing is even better than Google Docs in some edge cases. So its unclear which way the market will go. Perhaps Microsoft has effectively fended off the online-first threat and can use its inertia and muscle to keep Office at the top. In any case, we'll move to a more heterogenous world where many suites or even individual tools are viable businesses. [1]: https://support.google.com/a/table/7314896?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/table/7314896?hl=en [2]: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/10/easily-add-to-google-docs-with-new.html https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/10/easily-add-t... [3]: https://9to5google.com/2021/10/20/google-docs-menu/ https://9to5google.com/2021/10/20/google-docs-menu/ [4]: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/workspace/the-future-of-work-with-google-workspace https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/workspace/the-future-... Disclaimer: I work at Google and used to work in the division that develops Google Docs. These are all my opinions.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  I find it incredible that Docs is still unable to number headings. And they're trying to sell it to large organizations...
  - rwmj 5y ago
    Also no line numbering! I can't believe they have any lawyers as customers since line numbers are essential for them.
- zelphirkalt 5y ago
  It is just the bare minimum, that most people using a word processor, can understand. They probably made it to grab some market share and then stoppen right there. It is nowhere close to being a workhorse to build upon for anyone, who has any professionalism in their workings with WYSIWYG word processors. Professional documents do not make use of direct formatting. One does not simply click a "bigger font size" button thrice or the "bold" button or whatever. Google Docs is a toy and I wont consider any document created in it in any way professional.
hughrr 5y ago
Yeah even Pages is better.
bushbaba 5y ago
or QUIP. I've seen QUIP quickly gain adoption in the F500. QUIP is an easy addition that augments Microsoft's suite, and expands their existing salesforce relationship. Kudos to salesforce on a great tool, and great enterprise positioning.
xhrpost 5y ago
I've been ignoring Dropbox Paper at my company but will now try using it on my next doc. What major features would you say Paper has that GDocs lacks?

It's utterly bizarre just how much Google docs seems to have dropped the ball. It really feels like they haven't developed the product in the past 10 years. This is the first significant feature change that I can recall in a very long time other than minor UI tweaks.

jfoster 5y ago
Considering the fates of other Google products, that's a great outcome. At least it didn't end up like Gchat or Google Reader.
slig 5y ago
I think it's great as this gives new companies the opportunity to eat their lunch.
Already__Taken 5y ago
I'm heavy into Google and hard a lot of gsuite education deployed. I was always agasp at how Google just doesn't improve gdocs/sheets sometimes at all for years. why do the two programs have different table/cell markup up and even options...
- Andrex 5y ago
  The table limitations in Docs are really the biggest thing that grind my gears about the service.
user-the-name 5y ago
samwillis 5y ago
81% of Googles revenue is from advertising, only 7.5% is from Cloud Services (Google Workplaces and Google Cloud Platform) I think its fairly safe to assume that the majority of that cloud revenue is from their Cloud Platform, not Workplaces. So it wouldn't surprise me if its as little as 1-2% of revenue (it could easily be less than 1%). There is no surprise then that it is such a low priority for them. It's mostly a box ticking exercise to ensure that they can sell more stuff to enterprises and hold Microsoft back a little.
- adrianomartins 5y ago
  I totally understand this vision, google docs, google sites, google drive must be really down in Google's priority list. Heck, Google Meet was down there up until two years ago. The problem I think is that, little by little, users start stepping outside the Google bubble and they start to realize that there's clear benefits. I used to be a 100% google person, then we started using dropbox paper for documents, notion for company wiki (and personal notes too), tandem for video calls. In 2022, our company is using Google only for email, calendar, and sheets. Two years ago we'd be crazy to even think about that. We're up to the point were it wouldn't seem crazy to go with the Microsoft suite, to be honest.
  - samwillis 5y ago
    > We're up to the point were it wouldn't seem crazy to go with the Microsoft suite, to be honest. I think for a lot of companies not going with Office is crazy, Google docs isn't good enough, and who's wants to have 7-10 different suppliers for different products (email, calendar, sheets, docs, presentations, wiki, chat, video). Far easer to just buy one cohesive system. There is probably an opportunity for one of the larger players to acquire the others and move back towards a cohesive platform. There would be push back but I suspect it would pay off. Imagine Airtable, Notion and Slack under one operation.
- luibelgo 5y ago
  2021 revenue was $257 billion, 1% revenue is a lot of money still
- 5y ago
theptip 5y ago
Agreed. It’s really weird; because of the bundling advantage, they don’t have to be better than Notion, they just need to be good enough that the convenience factor wins out. It’s also frustrating because if Google played to their strengths, Docs could be best-in-class; the real problem that everybody is struggling with is internal knowledge management. Why can’t Google build me a privately indexed knowledge graph of my internal docs, then let me use Google’s search to answer questions? It’s insane that this is not their product strategy for Docs. This should be “easy” to wire up, they have all of the tech already for google.com search. People like notion because it is easier to structure nested Wiki docs quickly, but you still have the same problems eventually of needing to curate your knowledge base, and things becoming too hard to find past a certain scale. Instead we get Data Loss Prevention and a bunch of other box-ticking features which, sure, are how you close enterprise deals to displace Microsoft. But I think they are sleeping on their vulnerability to disruption plays from the bottom of the market, and they need to invest more in building a moat here. Make the free/SMB customers delighted, and you starve potential competitors of the oxygen they need to grow into a competitor at the enterprise level.
- Lealen 5y ago
  It's probably not available because someone decided that it should be only available for enterprise customers, take a look: https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/ https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/
  - theptip 5y ago
    Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that feature (and I pay for Enterprise gsuite, so that tells you something about either my attention to Google product details, or the level of advertisement of this feature :) I do wonder if this is actually building a semantic knowledge graph of the content, vs. just providing a dynamic facade/aggregator for other apps’ search APIs, and doing “old style” text indexing/searching within Workspace services. It looks like the former based on a cursory read of the docs. It would be more challenging to build a knowledge graph over {drive,slack,Jira,…} documents, but if they just build a knowledge graph within Workspace that could provide more reason to use Docs vs. Notion/Confluence, or Google Chat over Slack. So there is actually a strong product/market reason to build this as a native feature even if you can’t solve it for other apps.
pradn 5y ago
A feeling of progress is hard to convey to users if the iceberg is mostly invisible. I assume much of the work on Google Docs is harder to see like backend improvements/scalability, rendering compatibility across platforms, file-format compatibility with MS Word (both being able to read/write with high fidelity and supporting the useful features). But if we look at release notes for the past year, we see a sequence of smaller features.[1] These include ML-driven quick replies for comments, being easily add smart links to people/docs/lists, being able to add image watermarks, and Japanese grammar suggestions. These announcements are in small blog posts [2], and are usually covered by the tech media [3] (largely summaries with a bit of flavor or - cheekily - instructions on how to turn features off). It is hard to feel like there's major progress in Google Docs when features, even useful ones, trickle out like this. Perhaps the big release every year model isn't that bad, for communication purposes. It's just not in the DNA of Google or any online service, however. If you look at the roadmap for Google Workspace, it's very much about collaboration.[4] This plays to the brand and strength of the online-first vision of Google Apps - it's easy to jump in and collaborate on docs, the suite works well together. I think companies that choose Google Workspace do so to transform the way they work. It's not really about just replicating the Microsoft experience on the web. That said, I think Microsoft has done an amazing job pulling their apps to the web and adding collaboration/sync. Their online version of Word has basically no caveats, and their realtime editing is even better than Google Docs in some edge cases. So its unclear which way the market will go. Perhaps Microsoft has effectively fended off the online-first threat and can use its inertia and muscle to keep Office at the top. In any case, we'll move to a more heterogenous world where many suites or even individual tools are viable businesses. [1]: https://support.google.com/a/table/7314896?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/table/7314896?hl=en [2]: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/10/easily-add-to-google-docs-with-new.html https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/10/easily-add-t... [3]: https://9to5google.com/2021/10/20/google-docs-menu/ https://9to5google.com/2021/10/20/google-docs-menu/ [4]: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/workspace/the-future-of-work-with-google-workspace https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/workspace/the-future-... Disclaimer: I work at Google and used to work in the division that develops Google Docs. These are all my opinions.
benhurmarcel 5y ago
I find it incredible that Docs is still unable to number headings. And they're trying to sell it to large organizations...
- rwmj 5y ago
  Also no line numbering! I can't believe they have any lawyers as customers since line numbers are essential for them.
zelphirkalt 5y ago
It is just the bare minimum, that most people using a word processor, can understand. They probably made it to grab some market share and then stoppen right there. It is nowhere close to being a workhorse to build upon for anyone, who has any professionalism in their workings with WYSIWYG word processors. Professional documents do not make use of direct formatting. One does not simply click a "bigger font size" button thrice or the "bold" button or whatever. Google Docs is a toy and I wont consider any document created in it in any way professional.

hughrr 5y ago

Yeah even Pages is better.

bushbaba 5y ago

or QUIP. I've seen QUIP quickly gain adoption in the F500. QUIP is an easy addition that augments Microsoft's suite, and expands their existing salesforce relationship. Kudos to salesforce on a great tool, and great enterprise positioning.

xhrpost 5y ago

I've been ignoring Dropbox Paper at my company but will now try using it on my next doc. What major features would you say Paper has that GDocs lacks?