Comments for

Comment of the Day: "Google Docs is Chock Full of Fail"

2008-02-23T07:17:47Z

In his post Why Google Apps is a Serious Threat to Microsoft Office, Bernard Lunn argued that the collaboration features in Google Apps are good enough to take on Microsoft. Commenter Karim took him on, with a well-written defense of MS Office. Also check out Bernard's response and the further debate that ensued. This kind of discussion is what we like to see on RWW, so well done Karim, you've won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Amazon WishList Widget. Here is Karim's full comment:

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"Open a Google doc. Paste an image. Oh, that's right, you can't Ctrl-C copy, Ctrl-V PASTE an image into a document. Ok, so INSERT an image. Now proportionally resize the image so it retains its aspect ratio. Oh, that's right, you can't. Now crop the image. Oh that's right, you can't.

Now insert a table. Now grab the edge of a column and resize the column. Oh wait, you can't. Now delete one of the columns. Oh wait, you can't.

Now type some text and select it. Choose one of the fonts on your computer instead of the six fonts Google licensed from Microsoft. Oh wait, you can't. Create a new paragraph style. Oh wait, you can't. Change the font color and background on some text. Now copy that formatting to another paragraph. Oh wait, you can't.

Now do a find and replace on some text. Hmmm, why is that feature marked as "experimental?" Oh, because you don't get to choose which instances get replaced, it just replaces all of them. And there's no way to undo afterwards.

People just love to use software where some incredibly basic feature like "search & replace" is marked with "WARNING! EXPERIMENTAL! Use eye protection! This could blow up in your face!"

I'm sure Google docs works for you and your needs, but for very basic stuff, Google docs is chock full of FAIL.

You "assume" the Spreadsheet product will be "ready for prime time pretty soon," but do not tell us why you think so. Do Google products usually come flying out of beta?

You tell us it's all gonna be great when Google Gears finally kicks in and you can work without an Internet connection, then you point to a review where the guys says, yeah, they enabled "experimental" offline use, but, uh, you can't actually edit documents offline. I assume this will also be done "pretty soon?"

Then you gush about how Google Docs is a "platform" -- don't you remember Microsoft Word is too? Do you not remember macro viruses? When malware authors realize they too "can plug into Google Docs as if they owned it" then there's a chance they're gonna 0wn you.

You talk about being able to view Google Docs on your Blackberry, when mobile device support for Microsoft Word documents is already pretty commonplace.

Finally you tell us that "Google will win this battle" is because "they have the economic engine," meaning, they have advertising in all their stuff. Yay capitalism. I know the last six times I used a word processor, I kept thinking it needed more advertising.

You undermine your own argument by adding that you assume you "can always opt to pay a subscription and be ad free." LOL! Order now and get a free set of steak knives? Now how much would you pay? But wait, there's more....

The irony is you could go out right now, and get a whole Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote) for $120 at Newegg, and you can install it on three different computers. And it works great and has tons more features than Google Docs. And it has no ads. Imagine that!

$120 / 3 computers = $40 per computer. Assuming you upgrade every 3 years, that's about $1.12 per PC per month for the MS Office suite. Why would I spend THAT kind of crazy money for software I use day-in, day-out when I can bang my head "for free" against the lame "experimental" features of Google Docs?

You started off your post saying "MS Office can be annoying, but it does work." By "be annoying," I assume you mean "cost money." I mean, you'll get around to coughing up $25 for RTM someday, right?

You said "If I want to persuade with words, I use words." Next time maybe you should try different words. :-)"

Comment from Business Loans on 2011-04-19

2011-04-19T23:23:44Z

Google Docs is just like a primitive MS apps.. The only advantage of GD is you can open that information anywhere online.. I edit my files on MS and Transfer it on GD.. so I can open files whether I have my Laptop/USB or not.

Comment from Wayne Byrne on 2011-03-17

2011-03-17T13:37:05Z

This functionality is really interesting and I can see a series of users moving towards threaded chat.

www.Outline.com for example is taking that concept even a step further with a live threaded discussion/chat hybrid.

Comment from Chinarut on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T17:47:44Z

good to see this debate going on :)

as someone who makes a point to use Google Docs just for about every word processing task I do and is now just starting to get frustrated with how simple the print formatting options are - Word certainly did something right with WYSIWYG even since the original mac! that said, i'll accept it's "down the pipe" as with everything else on the net :)

I think a really great point that is made that in an organizational rollout, you only have a percentage of users who are power users. the majority of folks will do fine with the simplicity of Google Docs and get their jobs done. If that ends up being a substantial savings for the organization - great. Most of the processing for knowledge-intensive organizations happens at the content level - just look at the wiki.

I can't say I share all my documents but it is a nice ace card to know you can share a document at any time in the future and invite someone to collaborate even if that wasn't your intention in the beginning - this is a very powerful option that has come through for me more than once.

I can't say enough for not losing documents anymore and just having them available just about anywhere including the ability to bust them out on the fly on an iPhone which has come in handy more than once.

spontaneity has become key as of recent!

Comment from steveballmer on 2008-02-29

2008-03-01T06:49:42Z

Lunn is as crazy as a bat on fire!

Comment from hieronymouse on 2008-02-29

2008-02-29T08:48:41Z

Obviously, the collaborative features would be the main reason to use Google Docs. But here too there is a need for improvement. Just now, for the first time, I tried working on a document together with a colleague, and had to give up since his screen became too jumpy when the two of us were inputting text at the same time (in different sections of the same document). The other user was happy enough with the process when we weren't trying to work together.

One important feature not to be found in Google Docs so far is document templates.

Comment from Stoicho on 2008-02-27

2008-02-27T22:10:04Z

The only complain I see here is copy and paste ... I.e. the clipboard.

Ray Ozzie talked last year about it here:
http://rayozzie.spaces.live.com/default.aspx
I bet Google ARE working on such a feature too.

One idea - browser plugin, which can interact with both the OS and the Browsesr. And of course specifications for clipboard items. And Microsoft better put those clipboard office formats in public because the EU commission is watching and this time the fine it may pass the $1000000000 mark.

Comment from Rick Treitman on 2008-02-26

2008-02-26T19:41:29Z

Try your Docs test in Buzzword (about.buzzword.com) and see if it might come closer to your needs.

Comment from Tom Scrace on 2008-02-26

2008-02-26T16:12:44Z

I think Karim is bang on with his analysis here. But not only are there basic functions missing, the advanced features of Word are also important. It is a fallacy to think that nobody needs the advanced stuff that Word offers, and that all anybody needs is a basic text editor. Sure, some people only use basic stuff, but there are a lot of people who need business-level features.

Anyway, Buzzword solves some (not all) of Karim's issues, and I have done a quick comparison of the two here - http://tomscrace.blogspot.com/2008/02/buzzword-web-word-processor-weve-all.html

Comment from Dan on 2008-02-25

2008-02-25T22:04:44Z

I'm repeating this comment from the other thread, where discussion seems to have died down:

It's true that most users aren't power users, and that many people only use basic functionality.

But most of the things that Karim pointed out *are* very basic -- these aren't super advanced features.

Moreover, when a large organization chooses a word processor (or spreadsheet or presentation tool) to standardize on, they make sure that the *power*users* are satisfied. They don't say, "Well, 70% of the users won't change column sizes in tables, so that feature isn't important to us." Instead, they say, "All word processors have basic functionality--let's make sure that our dedicated word-processing people get the functionality *they* need and let that dictate which tool we use."

So power features do count.

All that being said -- Microsoft is getting its ass kicked in terms of collaboration. SharePoint is a very useful tool, and lots of organizations are getting tons out of it (and probably more could learn to), but it has nowhere near the ease of use and collaboration within documents that Google does.

So if organizations need *lots* of internet-scale collaboration *and* have power users, where do they turn? At the moment, neither Google nor Microsoft has a great answer for that.

So the question is, which can happen faster: can Google build out their feature set, or can Microsoft build out their collaboration story?

I think Microsoft has the inside track here--they've got a decade and a half of features built into their suite--but it remains to be seen if they can actually beat Google to the finish line.

Comment from Hagrin on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T19:55:45Z

@27 -

Right, because no technical document requires you to include screenshots and those images need to be resized so that the formatting doesn't break?

Yes, images are only for 16 year olds. Clueless.

How about inserting Business Intelligence charts? How does Google Docs handle that? Printing labels? That's three business functions I could think of in 15 seconds that Google Docs fails miserably on. Do we even need to continue at this point?

Comment from marc uhlig on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T19:21:06Z

well, i think with google docs you can archive everything you need to get done for your professional work.

when i am working on a document it usually doesn't happen that i need to insert and resize an image every other paragraph.

and changing fonts, come on, thats more for the myspace kind of user, in a professional document you usually don't change fonts...

so, imho google docs is already capable of replacing ms office if you intend to create a professional looking document, if you want to create the invitation for your 16th birthday party, then ms word is probably the way to go.

Comment from also the errors are horrible.. on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T19:02:11Z

I gave a shot to google docs a while back and then in excel it used to show error for my data = Sorry, there was an error while saving in javascript alert. I don't quite remember speciality of my data but if the google programmer is here please remove all errors in javascript alerts..what can I do with that kind of error notification..I ended up copying content in email and sending over.

Comment from Krish on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T17:47:17Z

The problem with people like Karim and many others who have taken this post seriously is that they think Google Docs is a replacement for Microsoft Office. It is a wild assumption. First, Google doesn't claim Google Docs to be a Microsoft replacement (at least, not yet). Second, Microsoft Office is not the only other office system. The only factor that is in play here (which is very much evident in the comment of Mr. Karim) is the success of Microsoft's marketing. They have marketed Mcrosoft Office Suite in such a way that people's minds are numbed to not think about anything other than Microsoft Office. It is the proof of Microsoft's marketing success and not technological success. As geeks and analysts, we should be able to look beyond the marketing hype and dissect through the numbed mindset of ordinary non technical users. Anybody can see that Google Docs can solve the problems of 80% of the people. Out of the remaining 20% of the people, Open Office or Star Office or other Open Source office software like Abiword, etc. can solve the problems of 15%-18%. This leaves 2%-5% of people who wants many of the features that are exclusive to Microsoft Office. You cannot define success or failure of a product based on the needs of 2% - 5% of the people. If you take away the "mental numbness" of ordinary people due to Microsoft's marketing efforts and its brand consolidation, you can easily see that 95-97% of the people can happily live their lives using non microsoft office products. If you take the "collaboration" aspect of online apps like Google Docs, you have a clear winner in Google Docs (Actually, Microsoft could have emerged as a clear winner in this case if only they had broken out of their blind love for traditional software products). Letz not hype a comment borne out of Microsoft's marketing tactics. Letz dig deeper and determine success or failure based on the technical credentials of the products and thye requirements of majority of the users.

Comment from Dave on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T17:29:12Z

Karim is mostly right... for now.

and because he's "right", Microsoft will keep ignoring GoogleDocs until it becomes "good enough" to take over a decent chunk of market share. and when that starts happening, it will mark the beginning of a very long slow decaying slide for Microsoft. in fact, it's already begun.

>>works great and has tons more features than Google Docs

half-right. Office works 'ok', but not perfect. and it has tons of features that i hardly ever use. however, it doesn't have good sharing features, which i do use. finally, i don't buy products for having 'lots of features', i buy them for having lots of user benefits that meet my needs. one of those needs is simplicity.

i'm not saying i'm ready to chuck Office out the window, and there are times i need more professional formatting. but on the flip side, there are plenty of times i don't need all the feature bloat, and the sharing features outweigh all the rest of the other crap.

perfection is the enemy of "good enough".

while microsoft keeps optimizing for more features, google is optimizing for good enough.

just give it a few more years karim...

- dmc

Comment from Antonio on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T16:53:44Z

Others already had said, and I agree. To format complex documents, is still necessary an desktop app. Until now, almost none online editor has the capabilities of offices.

But for other types of problems, which need collaboration, the online solution are more suitable. I'm using the two in a daily basis selecting the best solution for the problem.

But for the problems stated by him, and for the majority of people who need an offline office suite, openoffice is sufficient and don't have to spent U$120.

Comment from Usr on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T15:39:56Z

Now, since when ReadWriteWeb publish something without checking the facts?

Let's see: "Now insert a table. Now grab the edge of a column and resize the column. Oh wait, you can't. Now delete one of the columns. Oh wait, you can't."

What? Heck, this is nonsense crap. Google Document has an excellent WYSIWYYG table support. You can do all that and a lot more.

And what this commenter fails to note, and maybe because he is biased, is that Google Docs is used as a communication tool. How do you do a school paper with 4 other peers, everybody using an different operational system and working remotely, in Microsoft World? With Google Docs its very simple.

Comment from Dawn on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T15:24:21Z

Google Docs sucks. I'll never use them again, as I wrote in this post: http://dawnkey.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/google-docs-stinks/

Comment from Matt Woodward on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T14:50:28Z

The one big thing you ignore is the collaboration aspects, which is what most people I've talked to who use Google Docs heavily use it for. For that aspect alone it has the serious potential to be an office killer, not to mention the access to documents from any computer and the numerous other advantages you fail to mention.

When you only look at the stuff Google Docs can't do, sure it doesn't compare to MS Office in terms of features. Turn that on its head though and you start to see where MS Office is seriously, seriously lacking and antiquated.

Comment from Abhishek on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T14:09:18Z

How about Zoho as an alternative to Google Docs or MS Office ?? http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2008/02/s-19.html

Comment from bernard lunn on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T12:46:32Z

It was probably a brief fleeting moment, but still a notable minor milestone in Web 2.0 when Karim's comment (to be precise, Richard's highlighting of Karim's comment) got onto the Techmeme front page. And that comment was picked up by an A-List Blogger (Robert Scoble) as well as others.

The debate that started here was sparked because a commenter took a contrary view to an increasingly accepted wisdom. The fact is nobody knows how this will pan out, this is all just opinion; but opinion and discussion does shape the future.

One key thread was picked up by a Blogger who represents Adobe. He picks up on the fact that if you drew a magic quadrant with "control over presentation/formatting" on one axis and "rapid online collaboration" on the other, neither MS Office or GOOG Apps would be in the magic quadrant. The Adobe point (yes, this a pitch, but a good one IMHO) was that you can start with GOOG Apps and finish with Adobe. When it comes to "control over presentation/formatting" Adobe is way ahead of MS (who is way ahead of GOOG).

It would be interesting to see if that turns into some integration or collaboration. Maybe Adobe should hire Karim as an advisor?

Comment from Fred Grott on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T10:23:05Z

Virus threats and past MS performance on the virus issue is why I never use MS products to read email..

If MS employees want to debate the virus issue at least show some damn awareness of their own past poor performance on that fucking ISSUE!

Comment from Social Mediation on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T10:18:59Z

I couldn't agree more although I think the argument would be that Google Docs is poised to seize the market once it can do all of those things while remaining secure, stable and fast both on and offline. Gears is already opening that door.

Comment from James on 2008-02-24

2008-02-24T08:27:47Z

Andy: It's quite possible Karim is right (those features didn't work for him) and you are (they work for you), either because Google updated the code in between his attempt and yours, or because of different browsers. It's easy to get platform-specific bugs like that creeping in and going unnoticed for a while; for that matter, I suspect the fact clicking above and to the right of this text box blanks the three text fields above it is not considered a feature, and may not happen in other browsers!

Crucially, though, Google Docs has some neat features Word simply doesn't, as well as the other way around. I suspect it would be a lot easier for Google to add (or perhaps simply enable and debug) the features Karim complains about than for MS to add what Word lacks. Even if Google Docs is pretty basic for now, I suspect it will be catching Word pretty quickly: a year from now, I bet the list of shortcomings will be a lot shorter.

Comment from JamieT on 2008-02-23

2008-02-24T05:22:53Z

Steve said: "The ability to collaborate and publish documents provides tremendous value which simply does not exist in the MS Office domain (and likely never will). "

Steve,
Does Office Live Workspaces provide the type of collaboration feature that you are after? You can:
-check-out files (i.e. lock them)
-share them with other people
-Specify read-only or read-write access to a file
-view files online
-see a version history and who produced each version.

That is all available today, although its in beta.

-Jamie

Comment from Gary on 2008-02-23

2008-02-24T03:26:41Z

I use Excel all the time for work and it trumps any online free "office suite" type program.

I use Google Docs for my online projects; but at my career-job I would be lost without Excel, specifically.

Comment from Jeff Wong on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T21:09:06Z

They BOTH suck, but for different reasons.

When I work with Google Docs, I recognize that I can't expect to do paper formatting in there or make it look nice, but for collaboration, I still can't believe that since 1996, Microsoft hasn't figured out how to make asynchronous collaboration not suck.

I wouldn't go beyond treating Google Docs as a sophisticated text editor though.

I also end up using it as a low-overhead wiki-style thing for coordinating with others.

Comment from old greeting card guy on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T21:06:46Z

The scary thing for MS is that Google docs is perfect for so many small tasks, quick and dirty stuff.

Since it's useful for these micro projects it really gives Google a chance to train people to like and adopt their software more over time.

I own a full copy of the latest Office, but still you Google docs for lots of little things that it's better for.

It's a great wedge for them to chip away with as their apps mature.

Comment from HeyHewy on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T19:19:42Z

Thank you! About time someone spoke truth to the church. The product is really "NOT" that amazing.

Comment from Corvida on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T17:50:33Z

Regardless of whether or not Karim was right, you have to admit that it can be extremely frustrating to use not just Google Docs, but a few of the other online word processors! Karim just pointed out a few of those faults.

Comment from enefekt on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T17:48:21Z

Buzzword does a number of things that Google Docs doesn't:

http://about.buzzword.com/

Comment from Belzecue on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T15:24:52Z

"... that's about $1.12 per PC per month for the MS Office suite."

How about $0/month for OpenOffice, which has all the functionality you point out. AND it renders legacy Word documents better than Word itself. AND it had ODF support for true document-format compatibility. Etc. Leaving out OpenOffice from the equation is a little disingenuous, don't you think?

Comment from John Sutton on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T15:01:10Z

The biggest issue with Office is the move away from the.doc standard - interoperability gone in the blink of an eye. Every time I save a doc in 07 I have to remember to save it in a format the rest of the world uses.

Comment from Mikael Bergkvist on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T14:46:39Z

The wierd part is that having more developers doesn't seem to equal outputting better solutions.
Microsoft has insane amounts of developers and they still produces nothing but shite on the web.
If Google docs are failing, it's hardly for lack of developers - it's something fundamentally wrong with the approach they have chosen.
I've seen stuff like this done better by a single guy.. maybe Google has *to many* developers?

Comment from Steve on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T14:19:00Z

I work with staff in 5 different countries on a daily basis and while it's natural to start by comparing features and price, based on my experience Google Docs solves a totally different problem for me and my team. The ability to collaborate and publish documents provides tremendous value which simply does not exist in the MS Office domain (and likely never will).

Another bonus is that the Google Docs provide much cleaner markup/formats for sharing information across the web and with other systems (e.g. publish, CRM, RSS, CM, Blogs, etc).

I use both, but more often I find I'm reaching out for Google Docs because that's where our new activities seem to get started these days.

My original expectation of web based office tools providing a similar experience to the desktop was low. However, I've found they generally work much better than expected and have encountered no serious issue that has been frustrating or inhibited productivity as of yet.

Comment from alibloomdido on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T11:10:44Z

I think the comments like Karim's is what Google needs most of all to actually beat Microsoft in the office space. If I were Google's manager I would say: Give me three or four skilled AJAX developers (which I think Google has more than 3 or 4) and I'll implement these things in a month plus a couple of months more for testing and polishing. That's exactly what it'll take. One problem could be with pasting images (not resizing/cropping - Picasaweb.google.com engine could easily handle this and it would be quite easy to make javascript calls to those functions). And that's why Google would need Firefox (or some similar browser but for now Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera wouldn't help much). It's almost the same functionality that is used in dragdropupload Firefox extension. It would be much harder to do with Internet Explorer. But that could be another way to make IE's market share shrink. Actually, almost all those things could be done through Firefox extensions. So it could be like you visit GDocs and it says "this app is better with Firefox - download our Firefox bundle with all the extensions installed - and be happy :)". And then those extensions would update automatically like other Firefox extensions do.

In fact, for making its internet applications really rich, Google really needs something like Firefox. Not everything can be done with AJAX. They could go Flash but it seems that it doesn't serve their strategy, although with Flex going open source this can change. But Flash wouldn't solve the problems like image pasting while Firefox would.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T09:23:10Z

Well actually I wouldn't be so quick to write his comment off. I've been using Google Docs almost right from the time it launched. I still use it, *however* there are a few frustrating aspects to it. So I end up using MS Word more often than not for word processing. Google Docs is great for when you're collaborating, as Bernard said in his post, but I think Karim is right to say it isn't yet ready to be one's default word processing tool.

Comment from Andy C on 2008-02-23

2008-02-23T08:41:08Z

I am hardly a power user of Google Docs and I don't doubt Office has a ton of functionality that Google doesn't.

However, I just created a document, inserted a table, dragged the margin to resize the column and deleted a column.

So I conclude Karim must be an idiot or a troll and ignored the rest of his lengthy diatribe.