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First 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 t

First 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 ago
The 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > > 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. None of this really matters. I totally agree with the parent comment: having an e-signature product that is only usable by other Gmail users (and of course their is really no way to know if any particular email address is a Gmail user) makes it useless. What, so if I need some docs signed I'll get half of them signed with DocuSign and the other half with Docs? Of course not, I'll just use the product that works with anyone. Google used to have this same "can only share docs with other Drive users" feature, though it's improved somewhat. In general I think the enterprise doc sharing features are so bad in Drive that the only way I can wrap my head around it is to think that Google is scared of antitrust concerns if they too closely tried to emulate features from the likes of Dropbox, Box and others.
ct520 3y ago
As someone that consults in this space I more or less agree with you. Requirements are derived from interpretation of UETA and ESIGN Act. Itext has a good write up and great library to leverage when taking on project like this. Docusign has a good writeup on esign/UETA. ESRA is the goto body on the subject, and if you need legal opinion DLA Piper is the goto in the industry. This stuff is fairly simple once you know it.
nextos 3y ago
> Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs better. Recently, they have also improved the UI on Google Docs and Gmail making it much less laggy. On my old NUC computer, it makes a big difference. It seems that middle-management is becoming a bit less sclerotic.
- ec109685 3y ago
  Chrome improvements might be helping there too.
  - nextos 3y ago
    Maybe, but this is something I experienced on Firefox ESR.
noodlesUK 3y ago
In Europe, including the UK and EEA, there is the eIDAS regulation, which outlines the requirement for eSignatures (amongst other things). In order for a signature to be recognised, it has to meet one of three trust levels 1. Electronic signature: this is basically something that puts a distinguishing mark on a file. 2. Advanced electronic signature: these use cryptography according to the specifications set out in the regulation, but anyone can make them. There are some requirements about how a person’s identity is linked to their signature. 3. Qualified electronic signature: these are advanced electronic signatures which have been produced with a recognised trust service provider. Each country has a list of trust service providers, and each other country mutually recognises their trust lists. It is a bit more detailed than that, but in general, simple transactions can pretty much use any electronic signature (but this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The uk generally doesn’t need anything fancier than docusign). In order for something to be completely watertight, it needs to be a qualifying electronic signature. In order for these features to be useful in Europe, google will need to meet the requirements of the regulations, and specify a trust level.
- danielrhodes 3y ago
  Ultimately where this matters is if one party contests the validity of a contract. I'm not sure how it works in the EU, but in the US that would mean a court would ultimately make that decision. To that end, they could decide that two people agreeing in an email thread is enough. It's all about your risk appetite. However, notice that Google has not said they are compliant with any regulation.
  - pkaye 3y ago
    Apparently in Canada a thumbs up emoji is valid as a signature for a contract. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/06/canada-judge-thumbs-up-emoji-sign-contract https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/06/canada-judge-t...
    - viscountchocula 3y ago
      Not is: can be
crazygringo 3y ago
> Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs better. I just find these comments to be so strange. You can look at all of the articles in that blog to see all of the feature improvements that have launched in Docs over the past 2 years. It's a lot of stuff. Maybe they're not features that matter to you, some are available only to paid customers as opposed to free tier, or maybe you just haven't bothered to even notice. But they're there. It's nothing about Google specifically -- I see people make these comments about so much software, where they assume a project is or has been dead, just because they can't even be bothered to look at the changelog. It baffles me. It's like, unless it's a radical total UX overhaul, people don't notice the work developers are putting in on actual features. And if it is a radical total UX overhaul, people complain about the change because they assume it's superficial rather than actual features.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  You've both summed up everything wrong with design churn and also justified it. Truly a cursed comment.
- flappyeagle 3y ago
  > But they're there. They're useless. I've been paying for Google Docs for over a decade. Nothing of note has been added until they finally... FINALLY let me get rid of the concept of "pages" recently. If you have to look at a changelog to understand what changed, then the stuff that's being shipped isn't making a difference.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  I looked through these posts for the last three years and there are less than five features that actually pertain Google Docs.
  - realprimoh 3y ago
    If you use Google Docs daily and even bother to look at the menus, the amount of changes added just the past 2 years is pretty massive. The reason they're in menus is because the dumbest thing Google can do is kill the native user experience. Just look at how slow Notion is and how snappy Docs is. Yet, a lot of Notion features are now in Google Docs.
nulbyte 3y ago
> From the screenshots, I think it is only a fake wet signature. I'm not sure how valid that is. This seems perfectly acceptable in my jurisdiction. Then again, Kentucky is pretty laid back. By statute, an electronic signature is just a mark made electronically that is intended by the signer to be a signature. That's about it. Same as if I were to sign by hand, but electronic. Call me naive, but these laws that make electronic signatures some complicated thing seem messy to me. It's a signature. If you want to verify ID, then do that, but don't conflate the two.
Galanwe 3y ago
> 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 Welcome to 2023! I've bought a house, incorporated a company, signed a work contract and contracted a lawyer just based on Adobe mobile wet signatures on PDFs.
- haldujai 3y ago
  Same here. I don't think I've signed anything by hand other than a restaurant bill or the occasional time I'm handed a document in person within the last 8 years or so. Adding to your list, even government documents as well as those related to my medical practice and licensing/registration stating "electronic signatures are not accepted" have taken the wet signature from Apple. Presumably this is all valid?
- dudus 3y ago
  2023? All my signatures at least in the last decade were fake wet signatures. All leasing docs, employment docs, and banks... I use the Preview App that comes standard on OSX. You scan a signature on a piece of paper with your webcam. Then you can just "paste it" anywhere, I even give it a dark blue shade. I had a single person give me shit and say they needed "ink on paper" insisting me to print/sign/scan. I just ran the PDF file through a website that makes it look like it was scanned with some imperfections and tilt. I wouldn't be able to tell it myself.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    > I just ran the PDF file through a website that makes it look like it was scanned with some imperfections and tilt. I don't trust any websites for that. Instead I display the document on the laptop monitor where the page has a white background but everything beyond the page is black. Then I use my phone's builtin scanner to "scan" my laptop screen.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    I do the same - if anyone asks, I tell them it is a scanned copy. I honestly did look at conformed signatures etc with a desire to do things "properly". However, all too often it was a problem - so fake signature it is. I do one extra step and "print to pdf" so that signature and annotations (if I have typed in content on a form) are flattened in the final pdf.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
andsoitis 3y ago
> Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs better. Google Docs have been improving a LOT over the last year or so.
- danielrhodes 3y ago
  I think Notion/Office 365/Airtable scared them a lot. Office 365: Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft products, this is actually a fully featured online version of Word, unlike Google Docs which has a subset of the features and layout. Notion/Airtable: A good portion of the use cases for Google Docs/Sheets (at least in your run of the mill tech company) are better served by Notion in terms of better structure, components, templates, and so on. The hacks that I have seen people do to get around limitations in Google's suite of products just to do something fairly conventional is a shame.
radium3d 3y ago
Ack, are you sure "some movement on making Google Docs better"... Google Docs is miles better than o365's alternatives. Holy cow is Microsoft's attempt laggy, bloated and a pain to have to use.
Duwensatzaj 3y ago
> You do not need to create fake wet signatures I’ve seen US Fed agencies reject signed documents when the signature is typed out, so the need exists.

jsnell 3y ago

The 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.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> > 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. None of this really matters. I totally agree with the parent comment: having an e-signature product that is only usable by other Gmail users (and of course their is really no way to know if any particular email address is a Gmail user) makes it useless. What, so if I need some docs signed I'll get half of them signed with DocuSign and the other half with Docs? Of course not, I'll just use the product that works with anyone. Google used to have this same "can only share docs with other Drive users" feature, though it's improved somewhat. In general I think the enterprise doc sharing features are so bad in Drive that the only way I can wrap my head around it is to think that Google is scared of antitrust concerns if they too closely tried to emulate features from the likes of Dropbox, Box and others.

ct520 3y ago

As someone that consults in this space I more or less agree with you. Requirements are derived from interpretation of UETA and ESIGN Act. Itext has a good write up and great library to leverage when taking on project like this. Docusign has a good writeup on esign/UETA. ESRA is the goto body on the subject, and if you need legal opinion DLA Piper is the goto in the industry. This stuff is fairly simple once you know it.

nextos 3y ago

> Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs better. Recently, they have also improved the UI on Google Docs and Gmail making it much less laggy. On my old NUC computer, it makes a big difference. It seems that middle-management is becoming a bit less sclerotic.

ec109685 3y ago
Chrome improvements might be helping there too.
- nextos 3y ago
  Maybe, but this is something I experienced on Firefox ESR.

noodlesUK 3y ago

In Europe, including the UK and EEA, there is the eIDAS regulation, which outlines the requirement for eSignatures (amongst other things). In order for a signature to be recognised, it has to meet one of three trust levels 1. Electronic signature: this is basically something that puts a distinguishing mark on a file. 2. Advanced electronic signature: these use cryptography according to the specifications set out in the regulation, but anyone can make them. There are some requirements about how a person’s identity is linked to their signature. 3. Qualified electronic signature: these are advanced electronic signatures which have been produced with a recognised trust service provider. Each country has a list of trust service providers, and each other country mutually recognises their trust lists. It is a bit more detailed than that, but in general, simple transactions can pretty much use any electronic signature (but this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The uk generally doesn’t need anything fancier than docusign). In order for something to be completely watertight, it needs to be a qualifying electronic signature. In order for these features to be useful in Europe, google will need to meet the requirements of the regulations, and specify a trust level.

danielrhodes 3y ago
Ultimately where this matters is if one party contests the validity of a contract. I'm not sure how it works in the EU, but in the US that would mean a court would ultimately make that decision. To that end, they could decide that two people agreeing in an email thread is enough. It's all about your risk appetite. However, notice that Google has not said they are compliant with any regulation.
- pkaye 3y ago
  Apparently in Canada a thumbs up emoji is valid as a signature for a contract. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/06/canada-judge-thumbs-up-emoji-sign-contract https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/06/canada-judge-t...
  - viscountchocula 3y ago
    Not is: can be

crazygringo 3y ago

> Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs better. I just find these comments to be so strange. You can look at all of the articles in that blog to see all of the feature improvements that have launched in Docs over the past 2 years. It's a lot of stuff. Maybe they're not features that matter to you, some are available only to paid customers as opposed to free tier, or maybe you just haven't bothered to even notice. But they're there. It's nothing about Google specifically -- I see people make these comments about so much software, where they assume a project is or has been dead, just because they can't even be bothered to look at the changelog. It baffles me. It's like, unless it's a radical total UX overhaul, people don't notice the work developers are putting in on actual features. And if it is a radical total UX overhaul, people complain about the change because they assume it's superficial rather than actual features.

candiddevmike 3y ago
You've both summed up everything wrong with design churn and also justified it. Truly a cursed comment.
flappyeagle 3y ago
> But they're there. They're useless. I've been paying for Google Docs for over a decade. Nothing of note has been added until they finally... FINALLY let me get rid of the concept of "pages" recently. If you have to look at a changelog to understand what changed, then the stuff that's being shipped isn't making a difference.
jupp0r 3y ago
I looked through these posts for the last three years and there are less than five features that actually pertain Google Docs.
- realprimoh 3y ago
  If you use Google Docs daily and even bother to look at the menus, the amount of changes added just the past 2 years is pretty massive. The reason they're in menus is because the dumbest thing Google can do is kill the native user experience. Just look at how slow Notion is and how snappy Docs is. Yet, a lot of Notion features are now in Google Docs.

nulbyte 3y ago

> From the screenshots, I think it is only a fake wet signature. I'm not sure how valid that is. This seems perfectly acceptable in my jurisdiction. Then again, Kentucky is pretty laid back. By statute, an electronic signature is just a mark made electronically that is intended by the signer to be a signature. That's about it. Same as if I were to sign by hand, but electronic. Call me naive, but these laws that make electronic signatures some complicated thing seem messy to me. It's a signature. If you want to verify ID, then do that, but don't conflate the two.

Galanwe 3y ago

> 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 Welcome to 2023! I've bought a house, incorporated a company, signed a work contract and contracted a lawyer just based on Adobe mobile wet signatures on PDFs.

haldujai 3y ago
Same here. I don't think I've signed anything by hand other than a restaurant bill or the occasional time I'm handed a document in person within the last 8 years or so. Adding to your list, even government documents as well as those related to my medical practice and licensing/registration stating "electronic signatures are not accepted" have taken the wet signature from Apple. Presumably this is all valid?
dudus 3y ago
2023? All my signatures at least in the last decade were fake wet signatures. All leasing docs, employment docs, and banks... I use the Preview App that comes standard on OSX. You scan a signature on a piece of paper with your webcam. Then you can just "paste it" anywhere, I even give it a dark blue shade. I had a single person give me shit and say they needed "ink on paper" insisting me to print/sign/scan. I just ran the PDF file through a website that makes it look like it was scanned with some imperfections and tilt. I wouldn't be able to tell it myself.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  > I just ran the PDF file through a website that makes it look like it was scanned with some imperfections and tilt. I don't trust any websites for that. Instead I display the document on the laptop monitor where the page has a white background but everything beyond the page is black. Then I use my phone's builtin scanner to "scan" my laptop screen.
- blitzar 3y ago
  I do the same - if anyone asks, I tell them it is a scanned copy. I honestly did look at conformed signatures etc with a desire to do things "properly". However, all too often it was a problem - so fake signature it is. I do one extra step and "print to pdf" so that signature and annotations (if I have typed in content on a form) are flattened in the final pdf.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

andsoitis 3y ago

> Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs better. Google Docs have been improving a LOT over the last year or so.

danielrhodes 3y ago
I think Notion/Office 365/Airtable scared them a lot. Office 365: Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft products, this is actually a fully featured online version of Word, unlike Google Docs which has a subset of the features and layout. Notion/Airtable: A good portion of the use cases for Google Docs/Sheets (at least in your run of the mill tech company) are better served by Notion in terms of better structure, components, templates, and so on. The hacks that I have seen people do to get around limitations in Google's suite of products just to do something fairly conventional is a shame.

radium3d 3y ago

Ack, are you sure "some movement on making Google Docs better"... Google Docs is miles better than o365's alternatives. Holy cow is Microsoft's attempt laggy, bloated and a pain to have to use.

Duwensatzaj 3y ago

> You do not need to create fake wet signatures I’ve seen US Fed agencies reject signed documents when the signature is typed out, so the need exists.