Google Docs vs MS Docs. Wondering why Google Docs still sucks? | Hacker News Reader

Google Docs vs MS Docs. Wondering why Google Docs still sucks?

whydoeseverythingsuck.com

20 pointsbdfh4223 comments

His argument basically boils down to that Google docs will always lag behind the desktop version of Office and, therefore, will always suck. On the other hand, Microsoft "clearly ... will have better editing features."

"I guess Google could just give Docs away" (they do already)

"Google's efforts with Docs seems like such a competitive joke" (even though they satisfy the needs of most basic document/spreadsheet authors, which is to say a huge market).

The author conflates feature-parity with the market leader with product quality.

I disagree; I think the author's central thrust is that Google Docs hasn't improved as quickly as people expected. It's been around in its current incarnation (post-Writely rewrite) for 3.5 years now.

While I don't agree that Google Docs sucks (I think it's "adequate" - not a ringing endorsement - for a simple majority of users' needs) I would like to see improvements.

Here's why they are coming: Chrome OS.

Chrome OS is predicated on solid HTML 5 support and web apps just like Google Docs. You can't sell a billion Chrome OS netbooks to IT departments without a solid office suite.

We just saw gears getting phased out, now we'll see HTML 5 offline support phased in and then we'll see some new features.

I've gone crazy waiting for new features as well in google apps. For instance, contact sharing. Seriously. Why so long? As a consultant in these matters I'd like a better roadmap so I can reassure clients that features are either on or off the horizon.

Me neither. I've been using for everything for about a year now. when I upgraded to Win 7 I forgot to reinstall my copy of MS office and I don't really miss it. Microsoft's product is better but I don't need the advanced features all that often.

I've gone crazy waiting for new features as well in google apps. For instance, contact sharing.

Agree that further integration would be good, and things like project management and so on. Google has been advertising heavily recently about companies 'going Google' by switching to Docs, and there's great potential yet to be exploited.

Presumably one of the most important initiatives at Google outside of search has got to be Google Docs. Having a platform for people to create and edit documents on the web has to have been seen as a critical feature.

Why? It's not at all clear to me why Docs should be "one of the most important initiatives at Google." Since advertising brings in the lion's share of Google's revenues, their priorities are probably:

1. Search - where most of the advertising money currently comes from

2. Android - where most of the advertising money will eventually come from

Also, considering that google's enemy-du-jour is now Apple, not MS, I wouldn't be surprised if Docs has slipped even further down the priority list.

A huge company like Google can not only rely on search and people liking their search to survive. They are always looking over their shoulder at this point, looking out for any new "Cool" company that will threatens their search bread. I think folks at Google are a bit worry at this time because the only reason why people still go for Google instead of Yahoo is still mostly the Cool Factor and likability thing; that is not a solid platform for a company to rely on.

So I think with Docs Google tried hard as they do every day to position themselves outside of search. It’s like a great singer with only one popular song, who tries hard to come up with new stuff without convincing his fans.

I can only wonder how long until the whole model behind Word gets perceived as completely obsolete.

Word comes from the ages when you edited a document, passed it along and then printed it for someone who should read it. This is not what we do anymore.

I'm not sure about this, the only part I don't see happening anymore (at least, not as often) is printing. We still create and edit documents, then pass them along (email, IM, web, etc). Are you saying we'll have some completely new concept beyond documents?

That said, I still do see lots of printing. For example when we group together for discussions it is a whole lot easier to have a paper copy that I can doodle on, make notes, etc than to try and drag a laptop in (tablet or not).

> Are you saying we'll have some completely new concept beyond documents?

Don't know about you, but just about every important technical document here resides in a versioned wiki. If we print it for, like you say, discussions, the doodles are usually merged with the document in the wiki when the discussion is over. The wiki page (or pages) is the document. It retains history, authorship and is the canonical reference for that information.

That said, this is more common in the IT-related areas. Lawyers, among others, tend to resist technical innovation. I just imagine how hard it was for them to adopt typewriters.

I haven't used Microsoft Office as long as I can remember. I keep OpenOffice installed on my machines just so I'll be able to open certain documents that other people inevitably send me. For my uses google docs and basic text editors suffice and I imagine that there are millions of others like myself.

Lightweight, efficient, and fast are the core features I need.

Not a fan of this article, many inconsistencies in it as @mmastrac points out but to be honest in the big company I work in points of view held by people making the decisions of what we all use are similar as of now so having this out is important.

It is just me? I cannot find any reason, or arguments stated in this article. Just an opinion.

My opinion is, Google Docs rocks because 1) extremely portable, a keyboard and a chair is all you need 2) sharing of documents make it very useful 3) can convert many different formats and export to PDF.

I have yet to find any reason to use anything else.

I have yet to find any reason to use anything else.

For lightweight text editing and easy document sharing, GDocs is perfectly adequate. For more serious document preparation (i.e. when you care what the output looks like), it still has a long way to go. The recent improvements are great, but I'm a little surprised Google haven't devoted more resources to it.

I'd really really like to see an export API which exposes the document features and allows people to export differently/to different things.

Google Docs is great for some purposes. If you just want to get information down in a basic structured manner for sharing and collaborating on, it's perfectly adequate. I use it frequently for internal material.

But when you care about presentation - about making documents which can be printed or rendered to PDF and look good, Google Docs plainly sucks. It's just the wrong tool for the job when presentation counts for something.

Even just considered as a WYSIWYG HTML editor, Docs is primitive compared to some js components out there. Working with tables is a joke in Docs, and this is just one glaring deficiency of many.

if the competition is between Google Docs and MS Word, I don't think you can really appeal to the appearance of the final document as a deciding factor. They both suck.

Surely you jest. Word can be coerced into making great print documents. Not as good as applications focused on print, sure, but orders of magnitude better than gdocs.

If you're used to latex, there's no comparison :-)

Hooray for competition! This can only spur Google a bit to improve Google Doc's feature set. Why does the author think one service must live and one service must die? There's always room for choice when services offer advantages over each other.

Should probably take into considerations the upgrades to Google Docs that are currently being rolled out (http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-google-docs.html). Wave like real-time collaborative editing, entirely new backed that doesn't depend on browser editing quirks ec. I'm looking forward to them and think they will solve a lot of the annoyances I have had with document editing with Docs.

I say annoyances, because the value of collaborative editing and online sharing outweigh them.

The only thing right about this article is that office applications online are not as mature as the desktop.

It would be much fairer to point out that applications in the browser are limited because the browser platform needs further evolution to make applications more usable and reliable. Google has taken quite a lead in this area. Including mechanisms for printing wherever you are, speeding up the browser and allowing users to work off-line. All without plugins.

Microsoft's offering relies on Silverlight for some features.

I went to the microsoft docs site and didnt see an editor. You can edit docs via that website? If not, what is this guy comparing?

"Google Docs vs MS Docs. Wondering why Google Docs still sucks?"

I assume because Google puts a lot of work in the api design.

Thats why it takes longer.

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