Why Google Docs Fail

Anyone familiar with the history of computing recalls power of the "Killer App". In fact PCs would not exist on everyone's desktop today were it not for this funny little app called VisiCalc. And despite the growing prevalence for mp3's and portable players prior to the iPod, it was the sleek design and intuitive interface that helped Apple dominate the market. So the difference between extraordinary success and abject failure can and often does boil down to some small detail. A seemingly insignificant "bug" can spell absolute disaster and bankrupcy, while attention to detail and usability leads to absolute market domination and a privately funded space race.

Which leads me to my point: I was trying to send feedback to my students last week about their discussion posts. As always I try to be a little tech savvy even in my grading procesdures and had created this brilliant spreadsheet with a post-by-post breakdown of the student's grade and individualized feedback on what was missing from their assignments. When I was working full-time in the office I could take this Excel spreadsheet, merge it with a Word document and then use Outlook to e-mail it to all of my students. They each see a customized break-down of their grade with personalized feedback and I only have to write 1 message. Brilliant right? It's fast, easy, and valuable to my students.

So naturally I want to find a way to translate this process into the cloud. So let's see I have a spreadsheet app, a word processing app, and an email client that all have to play nice together. Hmmmm who else has a spreadsheet, word processor, and email within a single service? Google!! And since Google is always about being slick, bleeding edge, and easy to use surely they'll have gmail and google docs fully integrated, right? Right!? RIGHT!!!?!?!?!

No.

After doing extensive searches, surfing through help docs, blogs, groups, dog piles, etc. the best answer I found was just simply No. Or somewhat if you use openoffice.org, or this crazy convoluted idea about spreadsheets and formulas that had nothing to do with email at all.

This isn't to say that Google docs is a complete failure. After all they did manage to master the astounding feat of integrating forms with spreadsheets. Something Microsoft still has yet to master despite Infopath's wholehearted XML-ean attempts. So which is more important? The ability to push data into your spreadsheet, or the ability to pull it back out again. And why the hell can't I find a tool that can do both!