Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 180 posts

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#141

Post by hackernewds »

gauravphoenix wrote: post #29

This 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.

I would counterargue that the people who do use it (such as myself) find it a pain to switch between interfaces and will campaign to get DocuSign replaced. If switching over is less painful than that of using DocuSign, we will switch over. Most will put their daily workload above what's better for the company financially

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#142

Post by realprimoh »

jupp0r wrote: post #133
crazygringo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

I looked through these posts for the last three years and there are less than five features that actually pertain Google Docs.

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.

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#143

Post by ulfw »

crazygringo wrote: post #85
danielrhodes wrote: post #23

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 t…

> 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 e…

I've seen it regress a lot in the last two years.

I have a Google Spreadsheet that I used to track investments I have in various markets. Three months ago Google stopped showing any stock quotes for ETFs in Europe. No explanation, just 'f u, we showed them for years now all your spreadsheet breaks'. I had to help myself with getting some quotes from Yahoo News via script but it's half-baked.[1]

Google doesn't care about it's products and anyone who thinks different hasn't opened their eyes.

Btw their lack of quality and care is not new for Google Docs/Spreadsheets [2] Issues keep popping up but are usually fixed after a while. This time they just stopped bothering.

I wish Google had Product leaders who actually cared about the quality of their products rather than just launching new features that make a splash and then slowly wither on a vine. Fewer features I could actually rely on would go a long way.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/googlesheets/comments/13i2gf6/googl...

[2] https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/76403135?pli=1

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#146

Post by zx2c4 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #90
rvnx wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No 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.

In other words: is strictly less useful than a "fake analog signature" script that uses imagemagick to paste a PNG/SVG with a signature (or a random one from a directory of signatures) on the last page of the document, and then to apply some or all of random {sub-2deg rotation, tiny gaussian blur, tiny non-linear transform, color threshold, strong desaturation}, to make it seem like the document was printed out, sign…

Sounds like you have a handy script to paste here... :)

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#147

Post by radium3d »

danielrhodes wrote: post #23

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 t…

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.

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#149

Post by Duwensatzaj »

danielrhodes wrote: post #23

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 t…

> 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.

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#150

Post by calderwoodra »

tootie wrote: post #130
whitej125 wrote: post #53

We 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.

I 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.

Could you elaborate on this? I'd love to stop collecting signatures, but I can't imagine an alternative.
Post reply on HN