Google Docs is another one of those applications that everyone is clammering about as a Word replacement. It is a free web-based word processor that has incredible “sharing” features. Without installing software, you can create a document and then share that document with one or more people.  Anyone in the group can edit the document and everyone can see all the edits.
You can’t do that in Word.
Unfortunately, this is where the Word/Google Docs comparison ends. Although Google Docs does wonderful things for free, with nothing more than a browser, it hardly has the basic requirements of a modern word processor.
I tried to complete a simple project using Google Docs and here is what I found.
1 – You can type and format text in basic ways. After selecting some text, the font, color and size can be changed. You’re ok as long as 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24 or 36 point fonts are all you want. There is also no way to format paragraphs or line spacing. It’s all single spacing with no adjustments between paragraphs.
2 – There is no Find command, but you can use your browser’s built-in find utility. The Find and Replace has no undo. Be careful with that.
3 – Forget about page numbers. If you print something, you can format your browser so that print job add page numbers. There is no way to tell how many pages you’ll print ahead of time because Google Docs doesn’t tell you more than the word count.
4 – You can insert a picture from a file. After that, the picture tools fall apart. You can’t crop a picture. If you resize a graphic, there is no way to control the aspect ratio. There are no tools that permit fine adjustments. If you need a picture to be three inches wide, you’ll need to print it, measure it on the paper using a ruler and adjust accordingly.
5 – A header is something that appears at the top of the first page and a footer is something that appears at the bottom of the last page. In between no pages have either.
6 – There is no style control.
7 – There is no tab control. I think a tab is half an inch, but the lack of a ruler leaves me guessing.
8 – There is no margin control.
9 – Ctrl-B, Ctrl-U, Ctrl-I… that’s the end of the keyboard shortcuts that aren’t built into the browser.
10 – There is no way to fully justify a paragraph (margins straight on both sides of the pages).
11 – There is no “reveal codes” that can show formatting marks. It goes without saying that formatting cannot be adjusted in bulk using Find and Replace.
12 – The only way to get multiple columns is to insert a table and paste your text into it. I crashed my browser trying to get a long document into two columns.
If you want a full featured word processor for free, get Open Office. Although the sharing features of Google Doc can be incredibly powerful, it’s not much of a word processor.
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I believe pretty much all cloud computing applications are in the toddler stage of their development right now. I do agree, Google Docs is limited right now, however if you look at where Google Docs was a year ago and compare it to where it is today there has been tremendous growth. Right now I think these online applications are great supplements to hard drive installed programs but within the next few years we are likely to see these online apps grow to become the next evolution in computing.
Right. Compared with Word, Google docs is extremely limited. It’s more of an editor than a full-featured word processor. Its strength lies in its ability to facilitate group editing of a dcoument within a fixed, closed, group. If you have a dozen people collaborating, it beats the snot out of a wiki from a usability perspective.
As with many Google products, it’s in perpetual Beta as they keep making incremental improvements. One of the newer improvements comes in the form of page numbers (#3 above). You can now add page numbers during the preparation to print your document.
Also, different applications (documents, spreadsheets, and presentations) have different feature sets so you can’t just check one and conclude that a feature is absent in the others.
Perhaps this article should be updated as these features get implemented. That would be more useful that leaving this post to merely document of the lack of features.
Where I have found Google Docs to be useful is during our districts “Senior Projects” in the past we have had to make sure we had at least one license for every word processor out there. Then we had to convert to “play nice” format that will work with Turnitin. There are still a lot people using word perfect at home. With Google Docs we can get a common ground as far as format goes. But I do agree as far as the issue’s pointed out still a need for improvement.