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eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive
- DiskError_ 3y agoFinally, I was wondering when Google Docs was going to implement this. eSignature platforms had a solid boom in the past ten years, but they all seemed to gatekeep rudimentary features behind tiered paywalls.
- notfried 3y ago14 months in testing, followed by a beta, is really moving too slow.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- danpalmer 3y agoThe alternative is launching too soon, getting it wrong, and being accused of killing everything.
- julianozen 3y agoIs that the only alternative?
- summerlight 3y agoThis is normal for Google, especially when some legal matters are involved.
- rvnx 3y ago14 months in testing, 0 support of eIDAS, the main electronic signature regulation and platform in Europe.
- btown 3y agoGiven that there are entire research papers titled things like "Analysing the impact of the GDPR on eIDAS" I'm not surprised that they launched without support...
- crazygringo 3y agoNot when it's a legal feature designed for enterprises. A partner company willing to test it is going to take 3 months to review and choose to adopt it, another 3 months trying to convert a few internal flows, and another 6 months to observe how it changes processes and whether it's an improvement or not. The point here is to get it right, not to get it quick. Enterprise software is the literal opposite of "move fast and break things".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pie420 3y agoThis is an intentionally crippled product. Google can't afford to give regulators a reason to go after them for a couple billion dollars. Google or Microsoft could easily have created a DocuSign competitor and killed DocuSign, like they killed netscape, wordperfect, etc. Now that they respectively control the internet and the enterprise software suite, they have one primary goal: protect and grow the cash cow. Everything else is a marketing exercise or a concessionary project given to keep busy the tens of thousands of computer scientists that they are paying to keep out of competitors/startups payrolls.
- benhurmarcel 3y agoWhat's the rush for this?
- j_san 3y agoIs this targeted for the US market or also the EU? Does this qualify as a an advanced electronic signature (AdES) under the eIDAS regulation?
- danpalmer 3y agoI don’t have any inside info here, but anecdotally, Google seems good at meeting regulatory requirements. I wouldn’t be surprised if it does meet this if it’s available in the EU.
- hbaum 3y agoAuthor of open-pdf-sign here. AdES alone is difficult to do without proper signatures and user verification. Besides that, if Google would go for advanced electronic signatures, I'd expect it showing up in the EU Trusted List, which it isn't. So unless Google is not utilizing their own Google Trust Services certificate authority, I'd say it's unlikely that they will launch with AdES that are compatible with eIDAS.
- j_san 3y agoThanks for your answer, I appreciate it. Although strictly speaking if they would only want to do AdES and not QES, they wouldn't have to be in the EU Trusted List, would they?
- rvnx 3y agoNo it doesn't, not considered as a trusted (certified) provider and doesn't meet the level for secure user authentication. It's like a gadget in Europe then. But still, it is useful. It can be used if you want to ask your daughter to promise to "Get good grades at school" in exchange for an extra Christmas gift, for example. And make it look like official. It's like pretending to be signing.
- haliskerbas 3y agoAnother set of startups that is just a feature on one of the big platforms.
- namanaggarwal 3y agoWill this be admissible in court of law ? I know docusign is. On what basis is it determined that particular signing tech is admissable
- jeffbee 3y agoVaries by jurisdiction of course. Under American law and similar systems the admissibility of a type of evidence is established by it having been admitted before, and the initial admission is based on the judgement of some individual judge.
- mbauman 3y agoIt would also vary by use-case. Some regulated industries have specific standards required for an electronic signature — and hitting those standards is typically an add-on cost for systems like Docusign.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> American law and similar systems the admissibility of a type of evidence is established by it having been admitted before It’s also been statute since 2000 [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Global_and_National_Commerce_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Glo...
- 8organicbits 3y agoIt varies by jurisdiction, but examples like this show that very little can be needed. https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-ruled-thumbs-up-emoji-can-represent-legally-binding-agreement-2023-7?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-ruled-thumbs-up-emoji-...
- crooked-v 3y agoThe important question is, when is Google going to kill this functionality? DocuSign only has to hold out until then.
- eclipxe 3y ago[flagged]
- reaperducer 3y agoSigh. Every HN thread. Sigh. Every Google product.
- deegles 3y agoWhy is it unwarranted?
- jader201 3y agoMaybe not necessarily unwarranted, but certainly unhelpful. It doesn't really add to interesting/thoughtful discussion in the spirit of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Particularly: > Don't be snarky. Converse curiously > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. These subthreads never really go anywhere, other than fan the flames of Google hate. Again, not necessarily saying they're not warranted, but for folks looking for interesting discussion, it can certainly add noise to the signal.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoSignatures aren’t a move-fast-and-break-things domain. Google’s culture is bad at maintenance and wind-down. I would react negatively to someone sending me a Google e-sign without having considered these questions.
- rvnx 3y agoInside Google, you usually get more easily promoted if you launch new products, than if you just maintain products. Let's see the moment when Google launches Twitter-bis. It's a matter of time before it's done.
- therealmarv 3y agoEverything which takes away from DocuSign is a win!
- candiddevmike 3y agoThis is enough for me to upgrade from Workspace Starter to Standard. DocuSign is extremely expensive for what you get.
- xnx 3y agoHappy to see more useful features added to tools I already use. Along with improvements to Google Forms, I expect a lot of light DocuSign and JotForm users will cancel their subscriptions.
- 23B1 3y ago[flagged]
- s-xyz 3y agoBye bye Docusign?
- I_am_tiberius 3y agoNo pricing === you are the product
- sassifrass 3y agoGoogle Workspace is a paid-for product?
- dctoedt 3y ago> No pricing === you are the product True, but is this no pricing? At a glance it appears to be available only to Workspace customers, which I believe you have to pay for (at least I've been paying for it for years).
- dexterdog 3y agoWith google you are the product whether you pay or not. Some of their most valuable data comes from the companies who use google for all of their email, calendar and documents.
- rrdharan 3y agohttps://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-whitepaper/page-6.html https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-wh... I'd argue it's the least valuable data. They can't look at it, they have regulatory, legal and contractual commitments to protect it, they have paying customers that will be very angry if it's lost or unavailable, and yet they can't mine it or train models with it or monetize it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- endisneigh 3y agoMakes sense. For Google implementing this is probably regulatory mainly, not technical. Given how expensive alternatives are, this will be a boon for small contractual actions, though I doubt any huge enterprises will (immediately) switch. Major limitation for now though is: > Non-Gmail users: the ability to request an eSignature from non-Gmail users Hopefully it's addressed sooner (September/October) rather than later (November/December).
- xmly 3y agoBad news for DocuSign
- danielrhodes 3y agoFirst this is a great idea. Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs better. I haven't used the feature, but from reading the blog post it is sad to see how poorly Google executes on products, even at the beta stage. Some context: I've built such a product before and eSigs are more simple than they seem as long as you do a few things. 1) You need to verify somebody's identity. Sending them an email with the request is a valid way of doing this. 2) You need to make the final signed document easily accessible (e.g. emailing all parties a copy of the signed document. 3) You need to not obscure what the person is signing (they need to be able to easily see the entire document if they wish) 4) You need to make it possible for all parties to verify the validity of a signature, which is done with an audit trail appended to the back of the document. 5) Some types of contracts are not valid to be signed with eSign. 6) The parties need to agree to do business electronically, but this is mostly up to them. You do not need to create fake wet signatures, cryptographically sign a document, or do encryption beyond what is necessary for normal compliance. Those are all UX or marketing features: they don't hurt, just that according to experts I have spoken to, they aren't a factor when going to court. And then we have what Google is offering: From the screenshots, I think it is only a fake wet signature. I'm not sure how valid that is. Apparently you cannot ask for an eSignature from non-Gmail users right now. But how are you supposed to know they are Gmail users? Can Google not send people a simple email with a link? This alone makes the feature almost worthless, and for something that seems so trivial. They also said they will only be adding an audit trail later this year. This is really sketchy because I believe it means you, nor anybody else can actually verify if it has been signed. Again, this is quite trivial: you store the audit trail in a database, and you append the log as pages onto the back of the PDF document.
- jsnell 3y agoThe article links to the help page for the feature: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12315692 https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12315692. It seems likely that it'd be a lot better at answering your questions than looking at screenshots. > They also said they will only be adding an audit trail later this year. This is really sketchy because I believe it means you, nor anybody else can actually verify if it has been signed. From the help page it seems obvious that both the sender and signers are able to check whether the contract has been signed. "1. Open the respective PDF file in Drive or through the link in the email notification. 2. Click View details in the upper right corner of the PDF to open the right side panel and view eSignature details." Are you saying that the only possible valid implementation of an audit log is one appended to the contract pdf? > Can Google not send people a simple email with a link? Obviously they could. But equally obviously from your description, this is not a feature where sending one email with one link is sufficient. Based on the help page the final signed contract is "saved in your Drive", an operation that's not meaningful for a random email address that won't have an associated Google Drive. It seems likely that this is a feature that would be blocked on e.g. embedding the audit log in the pdf as per the discussion above.
- fifteen1506 3y agoRIP Dropbox
- gauravphoenix 3y agoThis isn't a DocuSign killer yet and won't be for a while until Google get its enterprise story right. DocuSign is deeply integrated with third party workflows in large organizations. That's where the big bucks are and you can build a sticky business.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- krona 3y agoThird party workflows like... Google Docs?
- aodin 3y agoLike Salesforce
- drewda 3y agoYeah, I've been surprised to learn how DocuSign is used by some large corporations and government agencies. It's the system that manages all sorts of forms and workflows within the orgs, not just contracts going outside the org.
- danpalmer 3y agoOn the one hand this is true, however there's another side to this that makes it quite compelling. IT sign-off and buying new IT services is hard in many large businesses. This means that it's almost always worth using a built-in feature of software you already have, than going for external software. Add to this the fact that companies almost never have one company account, each team re-buys the same software because services are hard, and the fact that most companies already use DocuSign matters a bit less. Much of Slack's growth has been built on this[^1]. You can sign up for a free account and start inviting your immediate team. Paying for a small team is well under the typical auto-approved expenses limit, and when you've sunk your cost, got a bunch of people onboard, and proved the value, only then do you go to IT to get it rolled out across the business. Individuals using this sort of thing, termed "shadow IT", is a good way to grow usage. This feature of docs seems well positioned to grow that way even if DocuSign is available. [^1]: I worked on a team that was required by the business to use MS Teams. While we waited for the Teams workspace to be provisioned and all the authentication crap to be sorted out we signed up for Slack, invited everyone, and got work done for the 6 months it took to get a working Teams workspace.
- akulbe 3y ago[flagged]
- rodolphoarruda 3y agoThe only chance for it to fly among the SMB in Brazil where DocuSign and ClickSign are the major players is by adding WhatsApp to the signature workflow. Notifications via email alone won't work.
- whitej125 3y agoWe use DocuSign here and the amount of time I spend hopping back and forth (exporting and importing) between Google and DocuSign is annoyingly high. If Google were to enter this space... I would personally welcome it.
- princevegeta89 3y agoPersonally I found the entire design and the organization of files/docs/sheets between Google Drive and other apps in the Google ecosystem is confusing as hell. There was no way to follow a specific hierarchy and the commenting/reviewing system felt clunky. Wish I never had to use this Google suite of products if it wasn't for my employer.
- candiddevmike 3y agoYou would hate Microsoft 365 then. I find Google Drive extremely clean and easy to use.
- dudus 3y agoMaybe you should give it another look. Hierarchy eas terrible because it was originally designed to have tags instead of folders and these were prone for cyclic references. When they implemented folders they implemented them on top of tags and things never worked out great. It got a lot simpler since they nuked tags in favor of folders.
- tootie 3y agoI think if any enterprise reevaluated their e-signature needs they'd decide they don't need it at all. There's just better ways to track consents and contracts.
- calderwoodra 3y agoCould you elaborate on this? I'd love to stop collecting signatures, but I can't imagine an alternative.
- ew 3y agoWe attempted to create this last year with https://pleasesign.me https://pleasesign.me. Definitely a case of waiting too long on a good idea. Ah well, it still has some features Google might not launch :)
- jeremycarter 3y agoLooks great
- sethhochberg 3y agoMany, many, many years ago I operated pleaselocate.me when mapping SKDs and geoip were first becoming available to any kid with a website - it brought me some joy to see people are still using this style of domain
- ew 3y agoI like fun domains that just make sense :)
- Waterluvian 3y agoAs long as this doesn’t pretend like a signature is a cryptographic tool, I’m generally a fan of doing away with nonsense like Docusign.
- gumby 3y agoMy ID card has a chip in it and can be used to sign documents. Why not support that?
- amf12 3y agoBecause their biggest markets do not? And it's a just announced, beta feature!
- gumby 3y agoHmm, I just looked and it turns out not to be a requirement of all EU ID cards.
- bombolo 3y agoWhy make a proper real legal signature when you can just copy paste a scanned .jpg file at the end of a document (or do something equally useless)?
- pluto_modadic 3y agocopy-paste a png of you typing your name recording your IP... ...vs cryptographic proof someone had access to your ID card
- bombolo 3y ago> ...vs cryptographic proof someone had access to your ID card Which isn't what we are discussing here, this was the point… :)
- theogravity 3y agoDocusign stock doesn't seem to have taken a hit (yet): https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DOCU/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DOCU/
- joezydeco 3y agoBut thankfully Jump had some insider knowledge. https://beststocks.com/jump-financial-llcs-significant-reduction-in-docu/ https://beststocks.com/jump-financial-llcs-significant-reduc...
- dna_polymerase 3y agoJump are market makers, not a hedge fund, that position was $6.5M at peak. Probably part of an options trade. But at this size 100% not an actual investment. Those articles are auto-generated from regulatory filings. Down in that article they write about a 270 share investment, that's neither size nor notable.
- 30minAdayHN 3y agoAt this point I'm worried if Google will sunset their new features. Does anyone else have similar worries? At a personal level, I got bitten couple of times, or may be even more... (one was for the Inbox - or zero email gmail concept and second time with Google Domains)
- wanderingmind 3y agoThe main thing about eSignature is the willingness and ability to go to court to defend your tool and process. For the org that can't be be bothered to have a barebone customer service, I'm not sure how this will workout.
- tadfisher 3y agoIt's not like DocuSign does any sort of identity verification. I signed up for a free account and they validated my email address, that's it. That would be the only identifier associated with my signature, so Google actually has more information than them.
- wanderingmind 3y agoDoesnt matter. Ultimately Docusign will show up in court to defend their product and the contract. Google can't even bother to provide an automated response
- quantumsequoia 3y agoWhat makes you think Google won't show up in court? They do kinda neglect their free end users, but go to great lengths to appease enterprise clients (see: Google Cloud Platform)
- jsnell 3y agoDo you have any particular cases in mind where Docusign mounted a spirited defense in court despite not being one of the parties? How did those cases turn out? At least their terms of service don't suggest any kind of general legal indemnification of customers, only a limited one around loss of confidentiality caused by security breaches in their systems.
- amf12 3y agoThere is customer service available to paid workspace accounts.
- hintymad 3y agoThe top items in my wishlist are spreadsheet-like formula anywhere in a gdoc, spreadsheet-like tables, and support of Latex or MathJax. That is, keep up with Quip.
- aFaid7see0ni 3y agoI was hoping it's this https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/wikis/display/DIGITAL/eSignature https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/wikis/display/D... but unfortunatey we are not there yet
- EGreg 3y agoWhat is the minimum required functionality to roll your own e-signature which would be LEGALLY BINDING under the e-sign act? Seems all we need is: Consent to do business electronically — All parties must agree to conduct transactions electronically, either explicitly or implied. Intent to sign — E-signatures are only valid if the signer intended to sign. Signature requests need to be declinable. Association of signature with the record — Signers must make a visible mark or statement on the e-document. Attribution — Whether a name or a unique mark, the signature must be attributable to the person signing and only linked to them. Record retention — Signed electronic documents must be saved, viewed, or printed by either party and stored for future reference.
- mr_toad 3y agoFor a tiny moment I thought this might be about making cryptographic signatures available to the masses. A sign that there’s still some good left in Google. I should have known better.
- shallichange 3y agoNo x509 certificates involved? In countries with legally binding digital signatures (I.e. Argentina) you need a cert issued following identity verification.
- iudqnolq 3y agoSo it covers basically all use cases in the USA and most private commercial use cases in the EU. Seems reasonably useful for many people. Most countries that accept eSignatures don't require digital certificates. There aren't many other countries as strict as Argentina. See for ex https://www.hellosign.com/blog/electronic-signature-laws-around-the-world-a-look-at-esignature-laws-by-country https://www.hellosign.com/blog/electronic-signature-laws-aro...
- someonehere 3y agoLast time I had to implement Okta integration for DocuSign at my employer it was absurdly expensive. If Google does this right then I’d be ever so happy. DocuSign on the SSO Tax site: https://sso.tax/ https://sso.tax/
- alberth 3y agoLocked account. I can only imagine the pain this will cause people when they try to execute/sign a contract, and Google randomly locks your account … preventing you from logging in.
- awinter-py 3y ago'in tandem with our shrinking ambitions the size of company we are considering cloning is also shrinking'
- ptman 3y agoThere are alternatives: https://github.com/docusealco/docuseal https://github.com/docusealco/docuseal I would like esignatures to be backed by strong electronic authentication, like EIDAS
- homero 3y agoWhat's an e-sign anyway? It's basically an IP address that's often a VPN now
- johnfonesca 3y agoWe are developing a digital signatures solution, https://bulksign.com https://bulksign.com which also has a on-premise version (in addition to SAAS). In Europe, at least, we see an increase in interest for customers having the solution installed on their own servers for security reasons. So more people become aware that sending your confidential documents to a 3rd party is not that great security wise.