Reliability: Why I’m done with Google Docs

Google Docs Failure

The cloud doesn’t scare me. The future will be more secure the sooner bigger companies adopt standards on cloud computing and data storage that makes sense. By that time, we’ll have the infrastructure in place to make the internet accessible from virtually anywhere.

The challenge I’ve had over the past few months with Google Docs is the reliability issue. There are very few things in business that are more frustrating than to lose work because of technology. We put in human effort, knowledge, and creativity into doing things. When we lose access to them (or the entire documents themselves) it can be more than frustrating. It can cost money.

That’s the case that’s happening right now. It isn’t the first time, either. It isn’t the 5th time. At this point, I’ve lost count.

Every now and then, Google Docs simply stops working. We’ve lost documents beyond recovery before. We’ve lost spreadsheets with important data that has us now performing the unnecessary practice of backing up our data through localized Microsoft Excel documents. How is that even necessary anymore? The idea of productivity and collaboration software is to keep us from having to rely on archaic methods such as localized files.

It hasn’t happened in a while. For at least 2 or 3 months we’ve been using Google Docs error-free. It happened again tonight. I’m done.

This comes shortly after reading a story on this site about how Google is focusing less on Google Apps. That’s meaningless to me, now.

Goodbye, Google Docs. I’ll miss certain parts, but definitely not the errors that continue to plague you.

7 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve had a few documents break but never permanently. How did you manage to actually lose docs? (I maintain hundreds of documents, have thousands shared w/me)

  2. Google aren’t reliable, and their support is woeful. 

    Google Docs is still useful, though, and you can backup all your Google stuff offline in Microsoft Office with their Syncdocs app.

  3. I have had some some serious issue with Google docs.It happened with me once when I had shared the account details with my colleagues and later missed the docs when it was altered by some1 else. But there is no recovery system as per my knowledge. I have some sharing issues also related to docs hence I have been hunting for some alternatives of docs n found few such as CollateBox http://www.collatebox.com/ and Smartsheets must check these out..

  4. We have thousands of google docs in our organization that have been generated over the last 2.5 years.  We have not had any significant issues…..

    From time to time, docs maybe come slow and we have found this is usually attributed to users not logging out for weeks or months at a time.  To fix, completely log out of all sessions (multiple computers), close your browser and restart your pc.

  5. I use google sheets as a calendar to take appointments for hundreds of customers, and the hundreds+ of comments associated with them disappeared. On forums you can discover that, it “happens”. Google sheets is very convenient, but unreliable. Very sad to go back to excel sheets, a PITA.

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