The Enshittification of Google Docs
Or how I made a new document editor
Neil Gaiman: What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix.
Vladimir Nabokov: The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
Margaret Atwood: The fact is that blank pages inspire me with terror. What will I put on them? Will it be good enough? Will I have to throw it out?
Looking at the blank page has always evoked strong emotions in writers. Recently, however, all of that spectrum of emotions was collapsed by some nameless Google PM into white-hot rage when the organization decided to put their AI buttons on top of the document you’re trying to write:
Note that “Help me write” appears twice: once on top of the document, and once more to the right of it, just to make sure you see it.
I cannot express the disdain I have for this decision. Writing is hard enough. Staying focused on your vision. Crafting the words. Combatting insecurities. But now, just to increase the fabled “Gemini Adoption Quarterly KPI”, Google has added a persistent distraction right in the space you need all of your attention for. Every distraction costs you a thread of the idea; the whole world is being made poorer by this decision.
Let’s suspend our blinding rage for a minute, and try to use the AI functionality in Google Docs. AI, after all, can be amazing in writing—it can spot inaccuracies, find references, and even add em-dashes for taste. Let’s try to use the “Help me write” function to improve a draft I have.
I’d like my policy paper to be more persuasive, let’s hit that beautiful Create button and see what Google gives me.
So, Google puts a… pop-up? With a modified version of my draft? Atop my existing draft? And… There is no way to compare them? No in-line diff or even a side-by-side view? OK, let’s follow the CTA and hit Insert.
OK, so Google pastes the whole thing right into the doc, including both its dialogue with me and a new copy. What did it do with my old copy?
Oh, it just concatenated it with its own version. Not even a new paragraph. I’m not even talking about matching styling.
The cherry on top of this disaster cake is that Gemini inserted a table that doesn’t even render in the page properly. Google could be the most vertically integrated AI company in the world: it controls the AI models, the document editor, the infrastructure, the browser, and, in many cases, the device. But none of this works together. Worse yet, the experience has been getting worse, not better over time. The AI features are getting more intrusive, but not actually better.
So, I decided to do what any reasonable person would do and build my own document editor. The experience I want is simple:
Write without distractions.
Hit review.
Get feedback in Track Changes mode.
Accept or reject at will.
While building that and working on the actual suggestions, I realized that in socializing drafts, I have always tried to get diverse sources of feedback. So, I’ve implemented that as well. Each draft is now being reviewed from multiple perspectives. For instance, here’s what feedback on the same piece looks like in the document after an AI review:
I have found the quality of the feedback to be amazing. The editor has caught reasoning errors, factual errors1, and has even suggested some colorful metaphors that made me chuckle here and there.
If this resonates with you - check it out! It’s called Owl Editor. It has a free trial, and if you read my Substack - reply to this email with the email you use to sign up, and I’ll make it free for you for life. This is still a very new project, so I would love to hear any feedback you might have - good and bad. If you’re inclined to do me a favor, share this post or the Owl Editor with your friends: the more feedback I get, the quicker the editor improves.
HA! You captured the white HOT rage perfectly. I am going to chuckle my way over to your Owl Editor and test it out. Bravo for helping to set us free from the demonic gemini.