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Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

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Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#21

Post by samwillis »

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.

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 a box ticking exercise to ensure that they can sell more stuff to enterprises and hold Microsoft back a little.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#22

Post by arianvanp »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #19
punnerud wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not from document to block, but from XML-based into database-based. Try to open a Word document with a zip program, all you will see is a lot of folders with XML and blob images. Latex and Word is XML. Notion is database. The benefit of database: History, scale better, multiple users, merge text as diff is simpler +++

How is Latex XML?

ismorphic to xml. it's markup. not structured data

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#24

Post by samwillis »

As someone who has worked with "contenteditable" and the various javascript rich text editors, I find it quite amusing that they have made this change now. One of the hardest things to implement with contenteditable/DOM is wysiwyg page splitting. Now, just after Google abandons contenteditable/DOM for its own text editor/renderer implementation they add support to disable one of the hardest features they had to implement in the old version.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#26

Post by polote »

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…

> My bet is on Google Docs style,

Also in the industry. My bet is on all of them. Some people prefer block based, some prefer text, some prefer Markdown, some don't care. Writing a book on Notion is impossible for now, but building beautiful pages is much easier in Notion.

Microsoft and Google (And Atlassian) have all adopted the same strategy which is "Look more like Notion".

I don't think that Microsoft should be worried about Notion. But things are different with Google Docs, which is really threaten by Notion. At the end of the day, most Google docs can be created in Notion without any difference, and I actually doubt Google docs will be able to evolve enough to prevent that.

The strongest advantage of Notion compared to Google docs is not its text editor but it is his list feature. And there are a lot of list porn people. When you have 10% of your workforce being "hardcore list porn people" and 90% of the others being "dont care people". Then it makes sense that the full organization goes closer and closer to Notion

EDIT: "porn list" -> "list porn"

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#28

Post by dpkrjb »

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…

Have you ever tried to print a Notion document? It feels like they made the "Export to PDF" in a weekend. It's hugely underpowered and under-featured.

It feels like Notion's demographic just dont need to share documents as documents. Notion would likely have put more effort into that feature if they did.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#29

Post by nyanpasu64 »

ryankrage77 wrote: post #27

It removes the gaps between pages vertically, but it's not an infinte canvas horizontally like OneNote. You also can't place text in arbitrarily-placed text boxes wherever you like.

I've been using Pageless for a few days. It replaces a fixed page width with dynamic horizontal width adapting to window size, with a viewer-defined maximum width by right-clicking the unmarked horizontal ruler. I find this to be a useful feature for the most part, though it's unfortunate that showing the outline makes the room leftover for text narrower.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#30

Post by algo_trader »

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…

Good luck with the whole zoho suite. We could all use some alternatives.

Is there some sort of consensus on why Google hasnt really made a real effort to compete with MS Office?

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