Google Docs

Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which also includes: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. Google Docs is accessible via an internet browser as a web-based application and is also available as a mobile app on Android and iOS and as a desktop application on Google's ChromeOS.

Google Docs allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users in real time. Edits are tracked by the user making the edit, with a revision history presenting changes. An editor's position is highlighted with an editor-specific color and cursor, and a permissions system regulates what users can do. Updates have introduced features using machine learning, including "Explore", offering search results based on the contents of a document, and "Action items", allowing users to assign tasks to other users.

Google Docs supports opening and saving documents in the standard OpenDocument format as well as in Rich text format, plain Unicode text, zipped HTML, and Microsoft Word. Exporting to PDF and EPUB formats are implemented.

History
Google Docs originated from two separate products: Writely and XL2Web. Writely was a web-based word processor created by the software company Upstartle and launched in August 2005. It began as an experiment by programmers Sam Schillace, Steve Newman and Claudia Carpenter, trying out the then-new Ajax technology and the "content editable" function in browsers. On March 9, 2006, Google announced that it had acquired Upstartle. In July 2009, Google dropped the beta testing status from Google Docs. In March 2010, Google acquired DocVerse, an online document collaboration company. DocVerse allowed multiple user online collaboration on Microsoft Word documents, as well as other Microsoft Office formats, such as Excel and PowerPoint. Improvements based on DocVerse were announced and deployed in April 2010. In June 2012, Google acquired Quickoffice, a freeware proprietary productivity suite for mobile devices. In October 2012, Google renamed the Google Drive products and Google Documents became Google Docs. At the same time, Google Chrome App versions of Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides were released, which provided shortcuts to the service on Chrome's new tab page. In February 2019, Google announced grammar suggestions in Docs, expanding their spell check by using machine translation techniques to help catch tricky grammatical errors.