And Google is so big that even well-funded startups with great ideas can fail to gain traction. Introducing lots of changes is appealing to designers, developers, and the tech enthusiasts like me that they serve, but often causes average users to revolt. Great! I wish every product I used got 10 to 15 percent better every year.Īt the same time, Google’s incremental approach to improving Docs also reveals a dilemma that the company often faces when trying to improve its most-used products. Modern enterprise software is built on these kinds of useful integrations - Slack raced out to an early lead mostly because it let you monitor events across an entire suite of third-party products, including Google’s - but they have been next to nowhere inside Docs.įor casual users of Docs, the entire conversation can end here: Google is making a series of minor helpful changes to Docs, making the overall experience 10 or 15 percent better for you. Notably, smart chips can include file formats other than Google’s own - you’ll be able to embed document previews from Microsoft Office docs, for example. Together, they create what Google is calling a “smart canvas” in Workspace, built on individual objects called “smart chips.” While the shift away from printed pages is perhaps the most symbolic move here, the larger idea is to create more dynamic, interactive documents that are integrated with other Google products.Īs Dieter notes, this will offer a lot of practical convenience for average users: starting quick video chats from inside a document creating polls to help colleagues make quick decisions and quickly assigning tasks to colleagues via the that are already standard across most enterprise software. The changes are part of a suite of updates to Workspace that, I would argue, represent the biggest set of changes to Docs in more than ten years. ![]() It dynamically resizes the doc to the size of your web browser the way a web app ought to. There is a smattering of other small updates: emoji reactions in Google Docs in addition to traditional comments, a new timeline view in Google Sheets for improved project management, and best of all: a new “pageless” view in Google Docs that does away with the assumption that your document is meant for an 8.5” x 11” piece of paper. All of that integration will be useful, but it also has the benefit (for Google) of perhaps enticing users away from using competing products like Zoom or Slack and instead using Google’s cohesive suite. You’ll be able to start a Meet video chat directly within Docs or share your Doc directly into a Meet call with a button in the doc. Ultimately, Google is working to make every single part of its Workspace suite of apps interconnected. ![]() To me, the skeuomorphism of Docs has long been a sign that Google has fallen behind the times.Īnd so I was happy to learn, at long last, that’s changing. ![]() For casual users of Docs, the entire conversation can end hereĬreate a new document in any other digital writing tool and you see an infinite canvas in Docs you see a picture of an 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper, since Google assumes that any document you create is going to be printed eventually.
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