19 Facts About Google Docs

Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which includes: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep.

Google Docs is accessible via an internet browser as a web-based application and is available as a mobile app on Android and iOS and as a desktop application on Google's Chrome OS.

Google Docs allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users in real time.

Google Docs originated from two separate products: Writely and XL2Web.

In March 2010, Google Docs acquired DocVerse, an online document collaboration company.

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In June 2012, Google Docs acquired Quickoffice, a freeware proprietary productivity suite for mobile devices.

In February 2019, Google announced grammar suggestions in Docs, expanding their spell check by using machine translation techniques to help catch tricky grammatical errors.

Google Docs is available as a web application supported on: Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge and Safari web browsers.

In June 2014, Google rolled out a dedicated website homepage for Docs, that contains only files created with the service.

In 2014, Google launched a dedicated mobile app for Docs on the Android and iOS mobile operating systems.

The mobile website for Google Docs was updated in 2015 with a "simpler, more uniform" interface, and while users can read files through the mobile websites, users trying to edit will be redirected towards the dedicated mobile app, thus preventing editing on the mobile web.

In Google Docs, Explore shows relevant Google search results based on information in the document, simplifying information gathering.

Google Docs Cloud Connect maintained previous Microsoft Word document versions and allowed multiple users to collaborate by working on the same document at the same time.

In January 2022, Google Docs announced the text watermark feature to the word processor, allowing users to create or import watermarks to a document.

Google Docs 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".

Google Docs described the quality of imports of Word files as "impressive fidelity".

Google Docs summarized by praising Docs and the Drive suite for having "the best balance of speed and power, and the best collaboration features, too", while noting that "it lacks a few features offered by Microsoft Office 365, but it was faster to load and save in our testing".

Furthermore, the report noted that Google Docs had been repeatedly warned by researchers about the potential threat, with security researcher Greg Carson telling Ars Technica that "I don't think Google Docs fully understood how severely this could be abused, but certainly, hackers did".

In October 2017, Google Docs released a server-side update to its codebase, which started incorrectly flagging random documents as unspecified violations of its "Terms of Service" policies.