I am in love with Google Docs. Google has a great video on Google Docs that shows the concept and its benefits.
Basically, Google Docs eliminates the need to email attachments back and forth, thus eliminating the need to merge different changes made by different people. The documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are all edited online in real time via a compatible web browser like Firefox.
I have been using Google Docs extensively in my classes and extra-curricular activities since coming to San José State. One of the hardest things I face in using it is explaining the idea of editing online to students and teachers. I find that even after showing Google Docs to students, they continue to email back and forth attachments, with all the traditional problems of different people making different versions that must later be manually merged.
One hope of mine is that Google Docs is made into a Google Gears application, where people could view and perhaps even edit their documents in Firefox without an internet connection. If such a Google Gears app could merge changes made offline automatically and seamlessly move into online, real-time multiuser editing, the impact upon traditional offline office suites such as Microsoft Office and OpenOffice could be significant.
Finally, there is a current controversy over the terms and agreements of Google Docs. According to the article, the terms from Googlestate that
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services.
What’s funny is I interpret “which are intended to be available to the members of the public” to be Google Docs that are published or visible publicly, not for docs that are private and only made available to particular persons. Also, I interpret “modify” as making derivative works of public documents and not modifying the original document as written by a group or individual.
This would be expected; if I or a group I’m in chooses to make a document public, I would want it to be publicly indexed in the Google Search engine such that its content would be available to those interested. If we didn’t want others to access or find our document, we shouldn’t make it public.
This leads to a similar controversy over Facebook’s News Feed feature, which makes information already accessible more easily accessible, which can create social growing pains. This is of interest for another posting.