Google Docs

From IndieWeb


Google Docs is a free and fairly user-friendly document creating, collaborative editing, and sharing silo from Google that has also been used for its OCR support by some IndieWeb community members.

Features

Issues

Sharing unavailable

Perhaps the most important feature of Google Docs, collaborative editing, if often blocked, because of a "Sharing unavailable" error preventing you from sharing the document with others to edit together.

When you click the blue [Share] link/button in the top right corner, sometimes you'll see a spinning cursor for a bit and then this alert:

  • Tantek Γ‡elik: I have seen this error at least once a day when attempting to share a Google Doc with others. In comparison I have never had nor seen any similar problem with Etherpad.

See Also

  • Google
  • silos
  • Etherpad
  • Appears useful for converting to HTML (using copy/paste and a web UI)
  • Use-case: replacing a broken (due to infrastructure service outage) home page with a Google Doc, with the added benefit of being world editable: https://twitter.com/ChrisSinjo/status/1402214570278768643
    • "shout out to the verge for replacing their homepage with a google doc because of the fastly outage, but forgeting to restrict edits" @ChrisSinjo June 8, 2021