Google Docs

What hackers pick instead

• Microsoft WordThe standard word processor in law and many other industries, with deep style and template control and track changes, though layout quirks and long-standing bugs frustrate users.129recommend
• Apple PagesFree Apple word processor, preinstalled on Macs, that people find fast and pleasant, often over Word. Critics say the redesigned interface and icon are cluttered.39recommend
• WordPerfectFans praise WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS as a fast, rock-solid word processor with Reveal Codes and strong formatting. The most common caveat is its hard-to-learn function-key and keybinding interface.36recommend
• LibreOffice WriterFree word processor people use for everyday documents; opens and saves Word files well. Critics say formatting is fiddly and Markdown support limited.28recommend
• WordStarFast, distraction-free DOS word processor that people still write in once its keyboard shortcuts are memorized. Critics say it is irritating on screen and needs rote-learned multi-key commands.28recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 306 comments. Each links to the original.

1. It’s free, took me very little time to set up, and in case of an accident should give people enough leads to make their lives easier.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Show HN: LastShelf – an emergency map of your family's documents bills& contacts”

2. Google Docs added some kind of delay such that the typing you do into the title box right after you open the doc gets overwritten

   Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Bug Blindness”

3. I frequently share Google docs and sheets links widely and to entirely unknown readers. That is part of the utility of the tool.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Why I'm Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass”

4. Google docs serves my word processing needs, then again I don't do anything at home that wasn't already possible in Word 2.0

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything”

5. other commenters report that the real-time collaborative editing experience in Office is more sluggish than in Google Docs

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “The New Collabora Office for Desktop”

6. Google Docs is the worst implementation of collaborative word processing except for all the others that have been tried.

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “Don't Roll Your Own”

7. Write it in something like Google docs that tracks changes and then share the link with the revision history.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Implications of AI to schools”

8. The biggest evidence for collaborative editing is the immense popularity of Google Docs, Notion and Figma.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Lies I was told about collaborative editing, Part 2: Why we don't use Yjs”

9. It took me quite a while to get used to the "save continuously, keep revision history" of Google Docs

   Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Yes/No/Cancel causes Aspirin sales to soar”

10. The reason why Google Docs somewhat managed to break this was 1. free, 2. multiplayer/easy to share.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.”

11. may have the disadvantages of being both closed-source and American, but the advantage of being free

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Danish Government silently drops plan to dump MS Office”

12. Write it in google docs, and share the edit history in the google docs, it is date and time stamped.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Implications of AI to schools”

13. The original Google Search, Maps, Docs, etc. weren't feature rich, but what they had worked well.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Googlebook: Designed for Gemini Intelligence – Coming Fall 2026 – Googlebook”

14. Google Docs doesn't do even 20% of what Office does, but it's a serious competitor anyway.

    Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “Ghostty is leaving GitHub”

15. it went great, and was much more convenient than whatever we did before using Google Docs

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Zed: Delta”

16. You also don't have spend years learning to use it, and can get productive from minute 1.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “How I am deeply integrating Emacs”

17. edit history in Google docs is a good way to defend yourself from AI tool use accusations

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Implications of AI to schools”

18. I've come to enjoy the comment/live editing functionality of Google Docs more than Word.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

19. pageless mode and the markdown shortcuts is pretty close to my ideal writing experience

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Scaling HNSWs”

20. I rarely use the G Suite, but when I do I get bombarded with a queue of popups and alerts about this feature, this Gemini integration

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Backseat Software”

21. Google's leaks memory (like most of their software... so do Gmail tabs) and is so slow that it introduces a ton of input latency

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Business”

22. Docx conversion isn’t great actually. I happened to open a docx with embedded png images and google docs couldn’t display them.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “The immortality of Microsoft Word”

23. We use Google's online office programs at work and every time it has so far popped up a notification about a new feature

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Firefox Forcing LLM Features”

24. Google docs has a problem where if too many people open the document at the same time, it needs to lock the document.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “An Interactive Intro to CRDTs”

25. making a child dependent on the biggest advertising company on the planet for their documents is pretty gross

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: How would you set up a child’s first Linux computer?”

26. Google can and will close down your account for any reason they see fit and you'll lose all your Google docs

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products”

27. when you accidentally typed into the prompt field and hit enter it registered a daily active user metric

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left”

28. Similarly with Google Docs, as "serious" documents with proper tracking of changes and so on are in Word

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “OpenAI Should Build Slack”

29. They took away office software from you via Google Docs, so now you don't even own the software they do.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Google Antigravity”

30. People who aren't programmers use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Stripe Invoicing, etc for those various use-cases.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe”

31. Avoid the magical button that uses fake pixel dust to "polish" the text because the text smells like AI after that.

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Classical chess ranks 562nd of 960 starting positions after 460,800 games”

32. Google Docs, LibreOffice, and pretty much every text box outside of MS Office can effortlessly handle BIDI mixing

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops”

33. Competitive products like Google Docs, WPS or Euro Office solve proprietary file format problem very nicely.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in”

34. bespoke webapps like a figma or google docs which are near impossible to see what they are doing via the dom

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Computer Use Is 45x More Expensive Than Structured APIs”

35. I think these become much more apparent when using version history / suggestion tools in word processors

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “How to Write English Prose”

36. Write the text in Google Docs (or similar) and accept most of the orthography and grammar corrections.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “I keep getting flagged for AI, but I suck at writing. How can I solve this?”

37. their products are involved in larger scale feedback loops that refine the product much more quickly

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “I Cancelled Claude: Token Issues, Declining Quality, and Poor Support”

38. many of Google's important products were from M&A - Maps, Docs, android, doubleclick, youtube

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake”

39. authoring in Google Docs and exporting to HTML+CSS would be viable and is 10x more accessible

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Vim-pencil: Rethinking Vim as a tool for writing”

40. Between Libreoffice and Google Docs, I haven't touched MS365 products in almost a decade now.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Ask HN: Where is all of the AI coded software?”