Simply put, software doesn’t age well. Hardware, over time, always becomes obsolete, but if it survives long enough (think Olympia typewriters), it transforms from junk to vintage electronics or has a chance at a stylistic reincarnation (skeuomorphism or going “retro”). “). But rarely does anyone reserve the same kind of generosity for a shoddy piece of old software. I mean, when people hate software products, the hate isn’t of the more complex and tacky kind directed at, say, Philip Roth. People don’t really want to see more of it.
And 17 years after the release of Google Docs, its adoption is widespread but not universal. If your workplace is more crowded with Macs than Lenovos, you might be surprised to learn that Microsoft Word still dominates in market share. If Microsoft Word is like a DeWalt power tool combo kit, Google Docs is a cheap Swiss Army knife that’s useful but always leaves more to be desired. What baffles me is that the years since Google Docs’ initial release provided more than enough time to achieve feature parity with Microsoft Word, but it’s as if Google Docs never had the will. Instead, it has focused on small-time features (emoji reactions), and recent product announcements (“no-page” format, for example) have strived to surprise.
During those lackluster development cycles, the word processing space has been filled with a glut of writing applications. Not always successful but boldly experimental, they are more minimalist, maximalist, hipster, thoughtful, annoying, customizable, headstrong, over/underdesigned than Google Docs. For names, Bear, Coda, Airtable, Notion, Overleaf, Scrivener, iA Writer, Ulysses, and Obsidian come to mind.
Google Docs, while well done, has never felt as handcrafted as iA Writer or Ulysses. But it would be a mistake to dwell too much on its minor aspects. The successful use of OT, once and for all, demonstrated that the complexity of real-time editing could be tamed, a piece of evidence to which many groupware programs today owe their existence. OT also forged a path for more elegant collaborative solutions, such as, for those who care, Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs), which are used in domains like music (SoundCloud) and design (Figma). In modern software genetics, it would be rare to find software programs in which the Google Docs DNA segments are completely absent.
And because the usage pattern of those other writing apps turned out to be more pluralistic, that is, instead of relying on a single general-purpose app, users use different apps for quick note-taking (Apple Notes), writing ( iA Writer), scriptwriting (Scrivener), reference management (Zotero): Google Docs still excels in universality and has reached near-protocol status. Google Docs may be second-rate in the second- and third-rate features, but it’s top-notch in the first-rate. For what it’s worth, this article was edited in Google Docs.
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