Web 2.0: Google Documents
The term 'Web 2.0' is used to describe the new websites that bring about a greater level of interactivity, creativity, and collaboration amongst users. Web 2.0 websites offer more services than what was available in the Web 1.0 era. Google Documents is an example of a Web 2.0 application, and features on-line, browser based word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation capabilities. For this post I'll focus mainly on the word processing application in Google Docs.
About Google Documents
Google Documents requires a Google user name and password to use. Gmail users can use their user name and password to log in. Once logged in, users can create a new word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation. They can also choose to upload existing Microsoft Office documents, although complex documents may not be able to be fully converted into an online format.
Once a document is created or uploaded, it can be viewed or edited from any computer with an Internet connection. In my opinion, this is what makes Google Docs perfect for students or anyone else working on various computers throughout the day. As a graduate student, I can be working on a paper from many different locations, including my office computer, a library lab computer, or my personal laptop. Before Google Docs, I had to either constantly email myself the current draft of my paper, or carry around a flash drive wherever I went. If I forgot to save my document before I left a library lab computer, or if my flash drive were to be corrupted, all my work would be lost.
With Google Docs, everything is saved automatically, and even if I accidentally close a browser window a pop up window appears asking me if I would wish to save before navigating away from the page. It also means that I have central location for all my current work, which removes all the hassle involved with keeping track of drafts. Google Docs keeps track of recent revisions, and you can easily switch back to an earlier version of document at any time. This may not seem very important to someone who does all their work on one computer, but if you use multiple computers throughout the day it greatly simplifies the process. I've been using Google Docs for almost a year (my first document is listed as being created on 12/6/2006), and I've found it to be one of the most useful tools I've used in my career as a college student.
If you are working in a group or team, Google Docs can be used to easily share and collaborate on documents. User's can choose to share documents with other Google users. This makes collaboration on one document very easy, without the need to constantly email the most recent version to all team members. Group members can go online to access the document and see any recent changes.
Caveats
Google Documents is not a perfect solution, nor is it meant to be a replacement for full-featured software applications such as Microsoft Office. Word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents are very basic, and are limited in terms of formatting and other options. The word processing application should be thought of as a replacement for WordPad, not a replacement of Microsoft Word. Online documents can be exported onto a user's local computer as either a .rtf or .doc file, which can then be opened by Word.
There are also privacy and availability concerns. Because the documents are stored on Google's servers instead of your local hard drive, there is a possibility that your documents could be lost or viewed by a hacker. To prevent unauthorized access to your documents, Google uses SSL technology to encrypt data when a user is working on a document. There is also a chance that Google's servers could experience technical difficulties, making a user unable to access their documents. Both of these issues must be taken into consideration (don't use Google Docs to store sensitive financial information, etc), but in reality the benefits make up for the risks. Google is a very large company with large resources, and they seem to do a good job of making sure that your information and documents are secure and available. In the year I've used Google Docs, I've never experienced a service outage.
Conclusion
I use Google Docs for rough drafts, and when I create text documents online I will export them into an offline file format and use Microsoft Word for the final formatting. This method works great for me, and I can't imagine going back to using only Microsoft Word on multiple computers to create a document. Online word processing isn't for everybody, but I think that the people who take the time to get used to the nuances and methods will enjoy a simpler and more streamlined way of doing work.