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!

My First Failure

So in my endeavors to become completely mobile I've decided to cast off the chains of Microsoft Office in favor of more portable and universal platform friendly Google Docs.

This week I began working on my lecture notes for the Business Calculus class that I'm teaching at the local community college. Google docs does have a PowerPoint equivalent gadget called Presentation. It's very handy and allows basic edits of any presentation with slides and comes with some snazzy design templates too. What it doesn't have is all the advanced editing that comes with PowerPoint. In fact I was absolutely appalled by the fact that it couldn't create subscript or superscript font. As a math teacher I was mortified and offended to be so gruesomely excluded from consideration of my needs!

So sadly I was forced back to the pallid quivering arms of Microsoft to complete my presentation. Of course once I arrived I was again offended by Microsoft's horrendous oversight in leaving the wonderful new equation editor out of PowerPoint! Instead I painstakingly created the equations I needed in Word, then copied and pasted them into PowerPoint as flattened pictures.

I must say this is a situation where everyone failed me, both Google and M$ to some degree. So I don't really feel like I can put this one in the win column for either of them. I did complete my work in PowerPoint (although it took twice as long as it should have) so I guess I'll give this one to the desktop apps...begrudgingly.