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I don't see Google Drive ever providing an API for bringing your own client; it will probably have to be from the other side.

We already have OT and CRDTs for concurrently defining changes from each user and a way to merge them. There is also the Braid spec (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-toomim-httpbis-b...) attempting to standardize state synchronization on top of which one can bring any client

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> I don't see Google Drive ever providing an API for bringing your own client

In a way, they already have, since you can mount your Google drive on your local file system, and interact with the files from there. The problem lays with the proprietary Google Doc format.

https://developers.google.com/docs/api

Most things you would want to do to a Google Doc are available via oAuth API, right?

Not... really? I can't open it with a local application.

At least, not until someone (not me, no time) creates a local application which interacts with Google Docs via this API.'

In the mean time, I'll continue to use .docx, since Google docs can export and import form this format.

Yes! I think Braid is a good effort in this area, will add to the prior art section.

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