Google Docs trivia: 58 facts about word processor

Google Docs is a word processor included as part of a free, web-based software office suite offered by Google within its Google Drive service.

So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about this service.

1. Google Docs is a word processor
2. It is included as part of a free, web-based software office suite offered by Google
3. It is within its Google Drive service
4. This service also includes Google Sheets and Google Slides
5. They are a spreadsheet and presentation program respectively
6. Google Docs is available as a web application
7. Mobile app for Android, iOS, Windows, BlackBerry
8. And as a desktop application on Google’s ChromeOS
9. The app is compatible with Microsoft Office file formats
10. The application allows users to create and edit files online while collaborating with other users in real-time
11. Edits are tracked by user with a revision history presenting changes
12. An editor’s position is highlighted with an editor-specific color and cursor
13. A permissions system regulates what users can do
14. Updates have introduced features using machine learning
15. These include “Explore”, offering search results based on the contents of a document
16. And “Action items”, allowing users to assign tasks to other users
17. Google Docs originated from two separate products
18. These were Writely and XL2Web
19. Writely was a web-based word processor created by the software company Upstartle and launched in August 2005
20. It began as an experiment by programmers Sam Schillace, Steve Newman and Claudia Carpenter
21. They were trying out the then-new Ajax technology and the “content editable” function in browsers
22. On March 9, 2006, Google announced that it had acquired Upstartle
23. In July 2009, Google dropped the beta testing status from Google Docs
24. In March 2010, Google acquired DocVerse, an online document collaboration company
25. DocVerse allowed multiple user online collaboration on Microsoft Word documents
26. As well as other Microsoft Office formats, such as Excel and PowerPoint
27. Improvements based on DocVerse were announced and deployed in April 2010
28. In June 2012, Google acquired Quickoffice, a freeware proprietary productivity suite for mobile devices
29. In October 2012, Google renamed the Drive products and Google Documents became Google Docs
30. At the same time, Chrome apps were released, which provided shortcuts to the service on Chrome’s new tab page
31. In February 2019, Google announced grammar suggestions in Docs
32. Thus expanding their spell check by using machine translation techniques to help catch tricky grammatical errors
33. In a December 2016 review of Google Docs and the Drive software suite, Edward Mendelsohn of PC Magazine wrote that the suite was “visually elegant” with “effortless collaboration”
34. But that Docs, as paired with Sheets and Slides, was “less powerful than desktop-based suites”
35. Comparing Google’s office suite with Microsoft’s and Apple’s, he stated that “Docs exists only in your Web browser”
36. Meaning that users have “more limited feature set” than “the spacious, high-powered setting of a desktop app”
37. He wrote that offline support required a plug-in, describing it as “less convenient than a desktop app, and you have to remember to install it before you need it”
38. Mendelsohn praised the user interface, describing it as “elegant, highly usable” with “fast performance”
39. And that the revision history “alerts you to recent changes, and stores fine-grained records of revisions”
40. Regarding the Explore functionality, he credited it for being the “niftiest new feature” in the suite and that it surpassed comparable features in Microsoft Office
41. He described the quality of imports of Word files as “impressive fidelity”
42. He summarized by praised Docs and the Drive suite for having “the best balance of speed and power, and the best collaboration features, too”
43. While noting that “it lacks a few features offered by Microsoft Office 365
44. But it was also faster to load and save in our testing”
45. Google Docs and the other apps in the Google Drive suite serve as a collaborative tool for cooperative editing of documents in real-time
46. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users simultaneously
47. Users are able to see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits
48. Changes are automatically saved to Google’s servers
49. A revision history is automatically kept so past edits may be viewed and reverted to
50. An editor’s current position is represented with an editor-specific color/cursor
51. f another editor happens to be viewing that part of the document they can see edits as they occur
52. A sidebar chat functionality allows collaborators to discuss edits
53. The revision history allows users to see the additions made to a document
54. Each author is distinguished by color
55. Only adjacent revisions can be compared
56. And users cannot control how frequently revisions are saved
57. Files can be exported to a user’s local computer in a variety of formats (ODF, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, Office Open XML)
58. Files can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes