How does Google Docs work?

Google Docs is an entirely-web based application, allowing the user to access it from any computer with an internet connection without requiring them to install software on their computer or store files on their own computer (or an external storage device). As a web format, documents that are uploaded are actually converted into html format, and remain in that format until the user chooses to download it to their own computer.

Though on the surface, it appears to be an online version of Microsoft Office, it is a program that does not support the common features due to its limitations with HTML. Basically, whilst the online nature application is handy for sharing documents online and the ability to format a document using either HTML code or CSS, it lacks some basic features that Microsoft Office (and other word processors) offer in terms of page breaks and other advanced layout features. Upon closer inspection (especially of the ‘word processor’ application), it is really a web-editing program with limited fonts available and only the formatting options that are easily available on HTML pages.