Google Workspace ESignatures

So glad that there's competition to Docusign here. Of course the real product that Docusign sell is trust – trust by people signing and enforcing those contracts. At a time when digital signatures were inherently untrusted, they did well to give them a necessary sense of authenticity.

Will this feature have that same trust? I don't know, but I'm not sure it's even necessary anymore, today there's an inherent expectation that these sorts of things happen digitally anyway, so nowhere near the same barriers to making the signature stick.

Looking forward to not using Docusign next time I sign a contract at work, or perhaps using a better Docusign that has been forced to improve their UX next time I sign a tenancy or something.

At first glance, Google's e-signatures seems to check all the boxes for legally-binding electronic signatures: user consent to conduct business electronically, proper adoption of a signature symbol, and signed documents tamper-proof'd with a cryptographic signature.

(You'd be surprised how many e-signature platforms fail to meet the basic legal and jurisprudence standards for creating electronic signatures that can hold up in court)

I'm glad to see serious competition for 20-year-old dinosaurs like DocuSign, Adobe Sign (ex EchoSign), and Dropbox Sign (ex HelloSign). They've gone undisrupted for far too long.

Disclaimer: IANAL, but working at SignatureAPI.com I've been advised with the top e-signature lawyers in the US.

Is this new or something that has been around?