Google Docs, Sheets and Slides

History

Google Docs originated from two separate products, Writely and Google Spreadsheets.

Writely was a web-based word processor created by the software company Upstartle and launched in August 2005. It began as an experiment by programmers Sam Schillace, Steve Newman and Claudia Carpenter, trying out the then-new Ajax technology and the "content editable" function in browsers.

Google Spreadsheets, first launched as a limited test on Google Labs on June 6, 2006, originated from the product XL2Web by 2Web Technologies, which was acquired by Google in June 2005.

On March 9, 2006, Google announced that it had acquired Upstartle. Writely closed registration to its service until the move to Google servers was complete. In August 2006, Writely sent account invitations to everyone who had requested to be placed on a waiting list, and then became publicly available on August 23. Writely continued to maintain its own user system until September 21, 2006, when it was integrated with Google Accounts.

Meanwhile, Google developed Google Spreadsheets using the technology it had acquired from 2Web Technologies in 2005 and launched Google Labs Spreadsheets on June 6, 2006, as the first public component of what would eventually become Google Sheets. It was initially made available to only a limited number of users, on a first-come, first-served basis. The limited test was later replaced with a beta version available to all Google Account holders, around the same time as an official announcement press release was issued.

In September 2007, Google released a presentation program for Google Docs, which originated from the company's acquisition of Tonic Systems on April 17, 2007.

In July 2009, Google dropped the beta testing status from Google Docs.

In January 2010, Google Docs started allowing users to upload any file type up to 250 MB, with 1 GB of free space and paid storage available for $0.25 per GB per year. This cloud storage feature was eventually reworked when Google Drive was introduced in 2012. Google Drive now serves as the cloud storage service from Google, while Docs, Sheets and Slides serve as the office suite inside Google Drive.

In March 2010, Google acquired DocVerse, an online document collaboration company. DocVerse allowed multiple user online collaboration on Microsoft Office-compatible document formats such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Improvements based on DocVerse were announced and deployed in April 2010.

In June 2012, Google acquired Quickoffice, a "leader in office productivity solutions", with particular emphasis on Quickoffice's "seamless interoperability with popular file formats".

In October 2012, Google Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations were renamed Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, respectively. At the same time, Chrome apps were released, which provided shortcuts to the services on Chrome's new tab page. Google announced in August 2016 that support for Chrome apps would end on Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, and Linux computers between 2017 and 2018.

Web apps

Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are available as web applications for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari web browsers.

Users can access all documents, spreadsheets and presentations, among other files, collectively through the Google Drive website. In June 2014, Google started rolling out dedicated website homepages for Docs, Sheets and Slides that contain only files created with each respective service.

Mobile apps

In 2014, Google launched dedicated mobile apps for Google Docs, Sheets and Slides on the Android and iOS mobile operating systems.

In 2015, the mobile websites for Docs, Sheets and Slides were updated with "simpler, more uniform" interfaces for each, and while users can read files through the mobile websites, users trying to edit will be redirected towards the dedicated mobile apps, thus preventing editing on the mobile web.

In January 2017, Google announced that certain legacy versions of the Google Docs, Sheets and Slides mobile apps would be shut down on April 3, 2017, delivering a prompt that requires users to update to newer versions. App versions being shut down include:

Docs versions for Android earlier than 1.6.292 and for iOS earlier than 1.2016.12204

Sheets versions for Android earlier than 1.6.292 and for iOS earlier than 1.2016.12208

Slides versions for Android earlier than 1.6.292 and for iOS earlier than 1.2016.12203

Collaboration and revision history

The suite serves as a collaborative tool for cooperative editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations in real-time. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users simultaneously and users are able to see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. Changes are automatically saved to Google's servers, and a revision history is automatically kept so past edits may be viewed and reverted to. An editor's current position is represented with an editor-specific color/cursor, so if another editor happens to be viewing that part of the document they can see edits as they occur. A sidebar chat functionality allows collaborators to discuss edits. The revision history allows users to see the additions made to a document, with each author distinguished by color. Only adjacent revisions can be compared, and users cannot control how frequently revisions are saved. Files can be exported to a user's local computer in a variety of formats (ODF, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, Office Open XML). Files can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes.

Explore

Launched in September 2016, "Explore" enables additional functionality through machine learning.

In Google Docs, Explore shows relevant Google search results based on information in the document, simplifying information gathering. Users can also mark specific document text, press Explore and see search results based on the marked text only.

In Google Sheets, Explore enables users to ask questions, such as "How many units were sold on Black Friday?", and Explore will return the answer, without requiring formula knowledge from the user.

In Google Slides, Explore dynamically generates design suggestions based on the contents of each slide.

The "Explore" features in Docs follow the launch of a more basic research tool originally introduced in 2012.

In December 2016, Google introduced a quick citations feature to Google Docs. The quick citation tool allows users to "insert citations as footnotes with the click of a button" on the web through the Explore feature introduced in September. The citation feature also marked the launch of the Explore functionalities in G Suite for Education accounts.

Suggested edits

In June 2014, Google introduced "Suggested edits" in Google Docs; as part of the "commenting access" permission, participants can come up with suggestions for edits that the author can accept or reject, in contrary to full editing ability.

Action items

In October 2016, Google announced "Action items" to Docs, Sheets, and Slides. If a user writes phrases such as "Ryan to follow up on the keynote script", the respective service will intelligently assign that action to "Ryan". Google states this will make it easier for other collaborators to see which person is responsible for what task. When a user visits Google Drive, Docs, Sheets or Slides, any files with tasks assigned to them will be highlighted with a badge.

Add-ons

In March 2014, Google introduced add-ons; new tools from third-party developers that add more features for Google Docs and Google Sheets.

Offline

In order to view and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations offline on a computer, users need to be using the Google Chrome web browser. A Chrome extension, Google Docs Offline, allows users to enable offline support for Docs, Sheets and Slides files on the Google Drive website.

The Android and iOS apps natively support offline editing.

Supported file formats

Files in the following formats can be viewed and converted to Docs, Sheets or Slides formats:

For documents: .doc (if newer than Microsoft Office 95), .docx, .docm .dot, .dotx, .dotm, .html, plain text (.txt), .rtf, .odt

For spreadsheets: .xls (if newer than Microsoft Office 95), .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlt, .xltx, .xltm .ods, .csv, .tsv, .txt, .tab

For presentations: .ppt (if newer than Microsoft Office 95), .pptx, .pptm, .pps, .ppsx, .ppsm, .pot, .potx, .potm

For drawings: .wmf

For optical character recognition: .jpg, .gif, .png, .pdf

File limits

There are limits, specific to file type, listed below:

Documents (Google Docs)

Up to 1.02 million characters, regardless of the number of pages or font size. Document files converted to .gdoc Docs format cannot be larger than 50 MB. Images inserted cannot be larger than 50 MB, and must be in either .jpg, .png, or non-animated .gif formats.

Spreadsheets (Google Sheets)

Up to 2 million cells.

Presentations (Google Slides)

Presentation files converted to .gslides Slides format cannot be larger than 100 MB. Images inserted cannot be larger than 50 MB, and must be in either .jpg, .png, or non-animated .gif formats.

G Suite

The Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides suite is free to use for individuals, but it is also available as part of the business-centered G Suite service by Google, which is a monthly subscription that enables additional business-focused functionality.

Other functionality

A simple find and replace tool is available.

Google Docs includes a web clipboard tool that allows users to copy and paste content between Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawings. The web clipboard can also be used for copying and pasting content between different computers. Copied items are stored on Google's servers for up to 30 days. For most copying and pasting, Google Docs also supports keyboard shortcuts.

Google offers an extension for the Google Chrome web browser called Office editing for Docs, Sheets and Slides that enables users to view and edit Microsoft Office documents on Google Chrome, via the Docs, Sheets and Slides apps. The extension can be used for opening Office files stored on the computer using Chrome, as well as for opening Office files encountered on the web (in the form of email attachments, web search results, etc.) without having to download them. The extension is installed on Chrome OS by default.

Discontinued functionality

Google Cloud Connect was a plug-in for Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 that could automatically store and synchronize any Word document, PowerPoint presentation, or Excel spreadsheet to Google Docs (before the introduction of Drive) in Google Docs or Microsoft Office formats. The online copy was automatically updated each time the Microsoft Office document was saved. Microsoft Office documents could be edited offline and synchronized later when online. Google Cloud Connect maintained previous Microsoft Office document versions and allowed multiple users to collaborate by working on the same document at the same time.

However, Google Cloud Connect has been discontinued as of April 30, 2013, as Google Drive achieves all of the above tasks, with better results.

Google Forms

Google Forms is a tool that allows collecting information from users via a personalized survey or quiz. The information is then collected and automatically connected to a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is populated with the survey and quiz responses.

The Forms service has also received updates over the years. New features include, but are not limited to, menu search, shuffle of questions for randomized order, limiting responses to once per person, shorter URLs, custom themes, automatically generating answer suggestions when creating forms, and an "Upload file" option for users answering to share content through.

In October 2014, Google introduced add-ons for Google Forms, that enable third-party developers to make new tools for more features in surveys.

Google Drawings

Google Drawings allows users to collaborate creating, sharing, and editing images or drawings. Google Drawings can be used for creating charts, diagrams, designs, flow-charts, etc. It contains a subset of the features in Google Slides but with different templates. Its features include laying out drawings precisely with alignment guides, snap to grid, auto distribution, and inserting drawings into other Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations.

2009 document sharing incident

In early March 2009, a privacy error caused documents to be shared without user consent. Google released a statement, specifying that "sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document." The issue was fixed by Google, and followed by a statement that "less than 0.05% of documents" had been affected by the issue. Furthermore, Google said it has "extensive safeguards in place to protect all documents, and are confident this was an isolated incident."

However, later the same month, security consultant Ade Barkah wrote on his blog about security issues with the software suite. Issues included that embedded images in private documents could be viewed publicly on the Internet (even after document deletion); when users got access to a document that included a diagram (a new feature at the time), the new user could see any previous version of the diagram (including any sensitive information that was removed before sharing); and in some scenarios, users who had access rights removed from a document could still access the document without the owner's knowledge. Google released a statement that it takes "the security of our users’ information very seriously", but "based on the information we’ve received, we do not believe there are significant security issues with Google Docs". The statement finished with, "We will share more information as soon as it’s available."