Breaking up with Google (docs, especially)

[deano]

Long time Google user, long time complainer.... After a lot of left turns in my short, uninspiring career (journalism --> higher ed --> trying to become a priest (!), VA & then retirement community chaplain --> back to the academy/lots of other motley sidelines --> I'm now closer to where I started, but 15 years older, eight years wiser, and possibly carving out a nice niche for myself as an editor. I am good at it and have a lot of fun doing it. And, my editorial work might just underwrite (heh) my fantasies of being a writer, which was what I wanted out of life all along.

Google docs has been my stalwart companion the whole time. It's my favorite way to track changes and access files anywhere. But, no one needs to be reminded of how evil Google can be. In my specific case, I'm not wild about Google's AI/writing suggestions and its latest iteration, every once in a while I have a compatibility issue when merging documents, and now, too, I tire of Youtube's constant promotion (to me) of Grammerly, which purports to do what I know only humans can. :) Writing is thinking. We should not let the machines tell us what to think. Plus, Google docs has always had an air of illegitimacy I can't shake. Then, there are the privacy matters.

I'm already in the Microsoft hardware landscape, exclusively using a Surface Pro. Will I get used to the software landscape if I go back? I just don't like Word. Should I give it a chance? What say ye? Worthy alternatives?

[NYCfixie]

Long time Google user, long time complainer.... After a lot of left turns in my short, uninspiring career (journalism --> higher ed --> trying to become a priest (!), VA & then retirement community chaplain --> back to the academy/lots of other motley sidelines --> I'm now closer to where I started, but 15 years older, eight years wiser, and possibly carving out a nice niche for myself as an editor. I am good at it and have a lot of fun doing it. And, my editorial work might just underwrite (heh) my fantasies of being a writer, which was what I wanted out of life all along.

Google docs has been my stalwart companion the whole time. It's my favorite way to track changes and access files anywhere. But, no one needs to be reminded of how evil Google can be. In my specific case, I'm not wild about Google's AI/writing suggestions and its latest iteration, every once in a while I have a compatibility issue when merging documents, and now, too, I tire of Youtube's constant promotion (to me) of Grammerly, which purports to do what I know only humans can. :) Writing is thinking. We should not let the machines tell us what to think. Plus, Google docs has always had an air of illegitimacy I can't shake. Then, there are the privacy matters.

I'm already in the Microsoft hardware landscape, exclusively using a Surface Pro. Will I get used to the software landscape if I go back? I just don't like Word. Should I give it a chance? What say ye? Worthy alternatives?

I have worked as a k-12 Technology Director for more than 15 years and have dealt (i.e. supported it, trained others) with Docs since its infancy. It has become so much better but it is still not a full fledged document editor (presentation tool, spreadsheet, etc.). I am a Google Certified Administrator so I have an in-depth knowledge of both the "user" and "back-end" workings of G Suite. I think many k-12 schools are still stuck on G Suite because it is free, email is ad-free, and you can create a walled garden for the youngest kids.

This all became more obvious than ever when I returned to graduate school and had the choice of Docs or Office 365 (the university has since stopped supporting Docs). For even "simple" group projects (presentations and short papers) we got so fed up with Docs limitation we decided to use Office 365. The web version does have a slight delay for collaborative updates but it is so much more robust than Docs it was worth the small annoyance. For my own work (much longer and more in depth papers with charts, diagrams, indexes, etc.). I gave up and used Word/Office 365.

I still occasionally use Docs for some personal stuff such as simple/quick collaborative letters, spreadsheets, and presentations but more often than not I use Office 365 at home. I use an ad-blocker which deals with most of the YouTube nonsense. As for track changes, Word is so much better than Docs but the Docs version history is nice too have when you need it.

At work, it really depends on what platform is already in place.

As for AI intrusions, they are all moving that way. My wife who is an English teacher says that most schools do not even bother with teaching spelling anymore (though they do still teach grammar as AI has not yet caught up).

[SteveP]

I hate WORD and refuse to use it.
I use google docs when I need to write something or keep something.

I am an occasional user but I find Word non intuitive and a pita even when I am looking to do something that should be simple.
Too much stuff thrown into the program imo.
The other MS program I could not use is their G drive cloud equivalent... ( I forget what they call it now )...
only 5 g of storage and, again, non intuitive commands ( for me ).

[NYCfixie]

I hate WORD and refuse to use it.
I use google docs when I need to write something or keep something.

I am an occasional user but I find Word non intuitive and a pita even when I am looking to do something that should be simple.
Too much stuff thrown into the program imo.

The other MS program I could not use is their G drive cloud equivalent... ( I forget what they call it now )...
only 5 g of storage and, again, non intuitive commands ( for me ).

OneDrive is good if setup as a "local drive" on your computer because it acts as another local drive/folder. When away from your computer it is web based just like G Drive.

Office 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) is not the same as Docs in its current form. Microsoft "syncs and updates" your local docs with the cloud which is not the same as Google Docs which is only cloud based (although you can keep local copies of Google Docs with G drive). And I do not think either company does a good job of explaining it to "end users".

[sk_tle]

Google Docs are two things : online web space + office solution.

For the cloud part, there are other vendors proposing their own cloud storage or open source solutions such as Cozy Drive or Nextcloud.
For the office part I would say open source worthy alternatives are onlyoffice and libreoffice.
Both are available in web hosted version too, respectively onlyoffice online and collabora office and can be integrated with open source cloud solutions such as nextcloud. I understand asking an individual to install and maintain online cloud software is out of reach but thanksfully there are managed solutions :

OnlyOffice Hosting | 2X Faster OnlyOffice Web Hosting
Consumer subscriptions, flexible & shareable | The Good Cloud
business nextcloud › hkn
ONLYOFFICE Hosting | DigitalOcean Marketplace 1-Click App

There are also community managed hosting solutions run by individuals, collectives or associations. In France they are grouped under the CHATONS umbrella and some offer nextcloud and onlyoffice or collabora online. Usually you have to pay a small fee. There are not business per se but collectives that want to provide alternatives to the GAFAM. Are there similar efforts run in the USA ?

[deano]

Thomas, I don't know about similar efforts, but a lot of the open source software I have used, I have found to be excellent.

What I will say is, that my top priority in any word processor is completely seamless integration with Word. I edit a lot of dissertations, for instance, and heavily footnoted documents; in virtually all institutions, Word carries the day. Tracked changes must comport perfectly, footnotes must update seamlessly, and so on. I am admittedly leery of open source word processors for that reason, but willing to entertain.

[guido]

I'm quite fond of LibreOffice. Compatible with but not sucked into the microsoft universe. Solid and robust with damn few bugs. Open source community.

[sk_tle]

Thomas, I don't know about similar efforts, but a lot of the open source software I have used, I have found to be excellent.

What I will say is, that my top priority in any word processor is completely seamless integration with Word. I edit a lot of dissertations, for instance, and heavily footnoted documents; in virtually all institutions, Word carries the day. Tracked changes must comport perfectly, footnotes must update seamlessly, and so on. I am admittedly leery of open source word processors for that reason, but willing to entertain.

For my very limited use they are great but I know they are definitely not as well polished, the financial and human effort is simply not in the same scale. For some parts they are life saviors as in the past I managed to recover excel files that were impossible to open anymore on MS excel using libreoffice. I can only propose you to try them and figure out if they matches your expectations. As always one should not necessarily try to expect an alternative that mimic the exact same behaviors and interface. A lot of people have been let down and dismissed Gimp for its interface, and preferred pirated copies of photoshop while it is a great, constantly improving, tool. Sometimes things are done differently, but that doesn't mean for the worse. It can requires a little bit of effort to get used to it. Is it worth it ? Well it is up to anyone to make that decision.

The biggest issue with running alternatives, in all kind of software, is collaborative work. I know some writers who used really really old word processors. It didn't matter to them if the tool wasn't current with the industry as they are lonewolves and would only share the finished work to their editor. If your work has to be reviewed, annotated or edited by peers it is a lot different and much more difficult to work with tools that do not have a perfect compatibility.

[Bewheels]

While cross compatibility is miles ahead from where things were years ago, in my world if someone send me something that I have to do any level of monkeying around to open/view/edit/contribute ... I send it back and ask that they resend it in whatever established toolset/format we are using.

In other words, who and how you share the work can/will also play a role in which toolset to use.

Edit: I see Thomas just mentioned this as my post was going up.

[NYCfixie]

Thomas, I don't know about similar efforts, but a lot of the open source software I have used, I have found to be excellent.

What I will say is, that my top priority in any word processor is completely seamless integration with Word. I edit a lot of dissertations, for instance, and heavily footnoted documents; in virtually all institutions, Word carries the day. Tracked changes must comport perfectly, footnotes must update seamlessly, and so on. I am admittedly leery of open source word processors for that reason, but willing to entertain.

For my very limited use they are great but I know they are definitely not as well polished, the financial and human effort is simply not in the same scale. For some parts they are life saviors as in the past I managed to recover excel files that were impossible to open anymore on MS excel using libreoffice. I can only propose you to try them and figure out if they matches your expectations. As always one should not necessarily try to expect an alternative that mimic the exact same behaviors and interface. A lot of people have been let down and dismissed Gimp for its interface, and preferred pirated copies of photoshop while it is a great, constantly improving, tool. Sometimes things are done differently, but that doesn't mean for the worse. It can requires a little bit of effort to get used to it. Is it worth it ? Well it is up to anyone to make that decision.

The biggest issue with running alternatives, in all kind of software, is collaborative work. I know some writers who used really really old word processors. It didn't matter to them if the tool wasn't current with the industry as they are lonewolves and would only share the finished work to their editor. If your work has to be reviewed, annotated or edited by peers it is a lot different and much more difficult to work with tools that do not have a perfect compatibility.

You may not like it, but you already have your answer: Word/Office-365. Assuming not everyone is going to be using the latest version of Word, I think that alone will be enough compatibility issues to deal with without inserting another company's product (whether it paid or open source) into the mix.

[sk_tle]

You may not like it, but you already have your answer: Word/Office-365. Assuming not everyone is going to be using the latest version of Word, I think that alone will be enough compatibility issues to deal with without inserting another company's product (whether it paid or open source) into the mix.

I know that. But a truckload of people do not have that collaborative work requirements and would do better sharing the end document as a pdf or epub file.

On the other hand I'm also doing collaborative technical writing using a very simple markup format (markdown) and all we needs is a basic text editor (hey even notepad would be enough) and a versioning system such as git. You can even work on separated part of the documents separately, create pull requests for reviewing before putting it in the master branch. Sometimes simpler is better and more flexible. Markup langages are nice when you enforce standard formatting requirements on your documents.

[vvv321]

You may not like it, but you already have your answer: Word/Office-365. Assuming not everyone is going to be using the latest version of Word, I think that alone will be enough compatibility issues to deal with without inserting another company's product (whether it paid or open source) into the mix.

Yup, you need JES I mean word 365. Your work may provide it for no cost, a lot of universities do, at least you can get a discount.

[snotrockets]

Having used almost everything under the sun, the collaboration between different users in gdoc is second to none: if you ever have more than one person working on a document, it's either gdocs or pain & misery.

If you're working alone, MS Word is great, ton of features, some people hate on the new interface but it made things a lot better.

There's no good file sharing solution for non enterprise users (and the one for enterprise users suck, but due to requirements). If you don't need collab editing, Office 365 comes with pretty good cloud storage.

You'll get Grammarly ads regardless of the processor you use – they're too smart to target just based on gdocs usage (and it's not something that only humans can do. I have a lot to say about modern NLP research and its results, but the tl;dr of it is that even the bad results are getting amazingly good)