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Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

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Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#101

Post by luibelgo »

samwillis wrote: post #21
chippiewill wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

2021 revenue was $257 billion, 1% revenue is a lot of money still

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#102

Post by ivansavz »

cs702 wrote: post #38

A "pageless document that lives online" is also known as... a web page. Instead of creating web pages in html, css, and js, people will now create them using familiar "word processing" and "spreadsheet" apps on Google Drive. And these web pages come with nice fine-grained access controls -- authors can specify who is able to view, comment on, and edit their documents with a few clicks. Makes perfect sense.

Speaking of editing web pages using gdocs, I implemented this approach[1] on a recent project to make an easy-to-use CMS. The server acts as a proxy to get the HTML from google docs and does some cleanup[2]. It's pretty good for simple info pages that don't require any special CSS or layout.

[1] https://github.com/rocdata/rocserver/blob/main/website/views... [2] https://github.com/rocdata/rocserver/blob/main/website/views...

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#103

Post by 3np »

thfuran wrote: post #69
falcor84 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that's not what you meant, but I just want to say that I would probably fight to the death against a redesign that would remove the page splits from my toilet paper.

But think of how much less paper you'd throw away in switching to one of those endless towel rolls.

I'm not so certain you'd be saving. Unless you get a TP holder with sharp metal teeth and consistently use it to get straight cuts to avoid wasting a good part of each roll on those angle tears.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#104

Post by raldi »

deanebarker wrote: post #47
cs702 wrote: post #38

A "pageless document that lives online" is also known as... a web page. Instead of creating web pages in html, css, and js, people will now create them using familiar "word processing" and "spreadsheet" apps on Google Drive. And these web pages come with nice fine-grained access controls -- authors can specify who is able to view, comment on, and edit their documents with a few clicks. Makes perfect sense.

This is exactly what I was thinking. I read that page, and at the end, I thought "...so HTML then?"

How do three nontechnical writers collaborate on an HTML document?

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#105

Post by setgree »

lewisjoe wrote: post #4

I'm in the business of building an online word processor - https://www.zoho.com/writer It's interesting how the documents industry is moving from print oriented legacy softwares (Google Docs, Word) to block based, app-ish, smart canvases (Notion, Coda, etc). Also both Microsoft & Google have adopted completely different strategies to compete in this market. Microsoft launched Loop as an entirely new app while Google…

Looks like a nice site!

One piece of UX/design feedback -- the red color on 'START WRITING" triggers an automatic response that I've done something wrong or that a site is trying to warn me about something. I don't think a lighter shade/different color would trigger the same response

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#106

Post by phreack »

cs702 wrote: post #64
yoz-y wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a weird criticism. A document is clearly not a webpage, main use of Google docs is easy collaboration and that’s not really a thing with html. Most people would not set up something like a git repo to track changes and comment on the content for example.

My comment was not meant as criticism. I'm not sure why anyone would interpret it as such.

The way you laid out the beats of your original comment made it sound sarcastic if you read it expecting the usual off-hand snark that's prevalent on the internet, so "makes perfect sense" would turn into "makes no sense at all" - therefore seeming like the product is useless or a step back when web pages already exist.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#108

Post by cs702 »

phreack wrote: post #106
cs702 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment was not meant as criticism. I'm not sure why anyone would interpret it as such.

The way you laid out the beats of your original comment made it sound sarcastic if you read it expecting the usual off-hand snark that's prevalent on the internet, so "makes perfect sense" would turn into "makes no sense at all" - therefore seeming like the product is useless or a step back when web pages already exist.

Thank you. Your feedback is helpful: In hindsight, I can now see my comment could be misinterpreted as sarcastic, even if that wasn't my intention. (If anything, I think giving people more/better tools for creating online content is great -- with the obvious caveat that all this content will reside in "private webs of documents" controlled by a single company.)

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#109

Post by cs702 »

raldi wrote: post #100
cs702 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment was not meant as criticism. I'm not sure why anyone would interpret it as such.

Your opening sentence came off to me as sarcastic opining that this is an inferior reinvention of a 30-year-old wheel.

Thank you. That's what phreack said too. See my response to him here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30555760

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#110

Post by pradn »

chippiewill wrote: post #7
adrianomartins wrote: post #2

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

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.

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

[2]: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/10/easily-add-t...

[3]: https://9to5google.com/2021/10/20/google-docs-menu/

[4]: 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.

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