Other People’s Evaluation of Google Docs

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Positive aspects

• On Chris Pirillo’s video on YouTube, he was explaining how he could view his Google Docs on the go via a mobile device (as seen below).

• Andrew Spittle, student blogger at Whitman College says that Google Docs allows him to take notes, even when he’s away from his own computer (Review on Google Docs Tour).
• Jorge Lepervanche, MBA 2009 candidate, Hult International Business School admires how he can share spreadsheets with fellow students and the group can help plan schedules by editing the one spreadsheet (Review on Google Docs Tour).
• Lesley Cutts, Marketing Manager of Goodness Direct says Google Docs enables many people to help proofread a particular document at the one time (Review on Google Docs Tour).
• A young couple not yet living together use Google Docs to help plan meals. The technology enables both of them to contribute to the menu (Review on Google Docs Tour).
• The auto save feature along with the Revisions feature is helpful in case an internet connection is lost or the user would like the previous version of a document (the Noc).

Negative Aspects

• May be slow on some internet connections (ZD review).
• Does not contain enough features to be able to replace an office suite (such as Microsoft Office) (ZD review).
• A ZD review raises concerns about whether people would trust Google to handle their private data.
• Limited compatibility with Microsoft Office. A ZD reviewer noticed that graphs were lost from exported spreadsheets (originally created in Excel) and Word documents lose formatting.
• ZD review said that while Google Docs is ‘excellent’ as a free online application, it ‘…still doesn’t contain enough functionality to be a replacement for today’s mainstay office suites in most businesses, despite some interesting features’.
• The sharing system ‘breaks down’ if the user refuses to use Google Docs. Though it is easy to use, some people would prefer to save the document to the hard drive and work on it within a familiar application such as Microsoft Office (the Noc).
• Users have no idea where page breaks are, whereas Word by default shows each page of the document separately. Makes it difficult to create multi-page documents (the Noc).
• Lack of header and footer functionality, besides manually editing HTML code (the Noc).
• Can only use web fonts (the Noc).
• No print preview in spreadsheet. The only way you can do this is creating a PDF, then having to manually open and view that (the Noc).
• Risk of someone hacking into your Google Docs account and deleting your files. Google offers no data recovery (the Noc).