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eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

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Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#171

Post by minutillo »

rvnx wrote: post #45
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signatures 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.

Inside 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.

Google Twitter-bis was called Google Buzz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#172

Post by angry_octet »

b112 wrote: post #134
angry_octet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more than a handshake deal — they are making their mark on a contract. This stems from the time before wide literacy and the ability to write, where people would make an X mark on the paper. Sometimes neither party could not read the actual contract, which was written by scribes. So the emoji is a mark. https://www.swanngalleries.com/news/autographs/2023/01/the-s...

That was not the court decision. The newspapers are giving snippets of the judge's decision, out of context. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/farmer-ordered-to-pay-a... The nuance here us that: - the emoji was bring used to reply with an OK - this was used in the past on other contracts between the two Note that judge looked into the meaning of the emoji, looked into how it was interpreted before, and said "but n…

Marks do not have to be unique. It is the act of doing so, symbolised by the mark, that forms the contract. It was commonly just an X.

This particular case hinges more on whether the emoji :thumb_up means agreement or acknowledgement. However if the person had habitually been agreeing with a mark then that would weigh in favor. It's not clear without the exhibit of previous text messages, but strongly implied by the wording, that this was indeed the case.

So this was accepted as a written contract with mutually agreed terms. There was no verbal addendum or additional terms.

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#173

Post by hackerbrother »

tootie wrote: post #93
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.

DocuSign shmocusign. Digital signatures is the most bizarrely anachronistic technology on the Internet. Even credit card vendors gave up on signatures.

There's a difference between DocuSign signatures ("I agree to this contract/agreement") and credit card signatures ("Here's a scribble which is somehow unique to me.")

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#174

Post by tootie »

calderwoodra wrote: post #150
tootie wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Checking a box while logged in is unequivocally superior to e-signature. What are you actually solving with e-signature? What bank requires you to Docusign anything to create an account or authorize a transaction? Do you e-sign when you read the Apple terms of service? You could literally stop using Docusign and replace it with nothing. It's there for old-school lawyers to feel secure and not have to worry about precedent which stopped being relevant years ago. Clicking "accept" on a little popup is legally enforceable for GDPR.

If you're doing contracts, how about a webform where you ask the signatories to answer 5 questions to prove they understand the terms then click submit? That is miles more legally defensible than an e-signature.

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#175

Post by crazygringo »

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.

Then you missed them or looked at the wrong blog entry tags or something. Over the past 3 years, I wouldn't be suprised if it added up to 100 new changes/features in Docs alone (not including Sheets etc.). There's generally 2-3 new things per month.

Here, go nuts:

https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/search/label/Google%...

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#176

Post by calderwoodra »

tootie wrote: post #174
calderwoodra wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Checking a box while logged in is unequivocally superior to e-signature. What are you actually solving with e-signature? What bank requires you to Docusign anything to create an account or authorize a transaction? Do you e-sign when you read the Apple terms of service? You could literally stop using Docusign and replace it with nothing. It's there for old-school lawyers to feel secure and not have to worry about prec…

Gotcha, so contracts are still necessary (red-lining, customer specific terms, retention, etc.) but e-signature should just be a checkbox. Is that right? If so, then yeah, I think that's fine except it doesn't obviate the need for DocuSign. The e-signature is probably just a relic/reflection of what users expect in order to add a layer of professionalism.

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#177

Post by j_san »

hbaum wrote: post #38
j_san wrote: post #3

Is this targeted for the US market or also the EU? Does this qualify as a an advanced electronic signature (AdES) under the eIDAS regulation?

Author 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.

Thanks 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?

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#178

Post by danielrhodes »

andsoitis wrote: post #136
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. Google Docs have been improving a LOT over the last year or so.

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.

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#179

Post by ulfw »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #169
ulfw wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

I just wished they had product people that worked outside the tech bubble. I need a way to write a letter to multiple people without some scripting magic or third-party add-ons.

They don't. They're famous for wanting Product people with engineering backgrounds, which is silly. That's not Product, that's just engineering/project management then. Product is way more all-encompassing and focuses more on people, user's wishes, behaviours, competitor's behaviours etc etc, none of which is relevant to engineering.

Re: eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

#180

Post by ew »

sethhochberg wrote: post #140
ew wrote: post #64

We attempted to create this last year with 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 :)

Many, 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

I like fun domains that just make sense :)
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