Google waves goodbye to Docs offline function

Google yanked its Docs offline function offline for good yesterday, much to the chagrin of some users. The Mountain View Chocolate Factory announced last month that its online document and spreadsheet editors would no longer offer offline access as of 3 May. But at the same time it was unable to confirm when the function would …

[Anonymous Coward]

Goodbye Greedy Google

I evaluated Google Docs including for offline use and I came to the conclusion that ultimately an adbroker could not be trusted with my data neither with longevity of non-ad services.

I am so glad I chose not to go with them, I would have been furious at this point. Bunch of greedy barstewards. Goodbye to all my google accounts and services now.

where is the evil google icon??!!

[Jay42]

El Reg can't tell time

Is it just me or is "for good" a different duration than 'until feature is implemented in HTML V5'.

Dolt! I was actually worried for a minute there.

[Anonymous Coward]

uh huh...

And Google really want businesses to take Google docs as a serious alternative to MS Office?

Now you can't even access any of your stuf unless you are connected to the internet?

Hmmm, bet mobile workrers are going to love that.

[Muckminded]

Premature evacuations

Perhaps Google could leave in the currently working functionality until they develop the replacement? It's a silly idea, I know.

It's like mothballing a fleet of spacecraft before building their successors. The ISS is going to be nothing but wall-to-wall Putin posters and empty vodka bottles by the time we get back.

[Richard Taylor 2]

could be

A Challenger 'oops' sort of mothballing?

[Anonymous Coward]

title? I never liked those!

The promise of a seamless upgrade from gears to html5 looks quite empty now. It was only made a couple of months ago. This was shortly after the oompa loopas stopped building gears for my platform thus making me roll my own binaries for el EeePC.

Google, you are now on par with Apple and Microsoft. Looks like I'll have to migrate my docs into CouchDB ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh...

...the good old cloud solution..

Anyone still think it's a good idea?

[John Macintyre]

offline google?

Time to switch to that other offline document system, called a hard drive/usb key.... I've yet to try the latest version of open office, might throw it on my ubuntu system later

[Dayjo]

Annoying

That I was trying to work last week with an incredibly temperamental internet connection and was highly confused that I couldn't find the offline set up! I didn't receive any notification of this being removed.

Meh.. I like google docs, it generally works ideally for me, but the offline access was one of the main reasons for this.

[Steven 1]

Cool

Must remember to remove our old platforms BEFORE implementing the replacements...

Hey if its good enough for the Google boys!!!

[OffBeatMammal]

wow. the ad server discovers it's hard to run a real business

I just feel sorry for business that believed the ads sold by the ad serving company and switched from something reliable, robust and enterprise capable, like, oh Notes or Exchange, and trusted their communications and documents to this.

Remember a while ago a company (now part of Oracle) claimed "The Network is the Computer" but everyone laughed because the network sometimes is offline. Looks like Google didn't dig into their cache and learn from history.

The Cloud is a nice place but only if I have a local cache to work on when I can't see the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Insecure about their goods

I really quite like Google stuff software and online services, but a killer for me is that what I find crucial today may not be available tomorrow because the functionality isn't 'popular enough'.

Not sure what kind of customers they're trying to help with that kind of approach.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, well said

The end result is that the platform is a very un-stable one and not to be trusted with anything serious.

[Doshu]

You just wait...

Google has a different definition of temporary than the rest of us. They want ALL your stuff online and on their servers and they will get it. As the new offline system is delayed and then delayed some more, those not discerning enough will become complacent and accept yet another transgression into their private data by this long-term offender.

To be fair, they are not the only d-bag company trying to force people's virtual lives online into their "cloud", just the first and foremost presently.

[Muckminded]

You just wait...part 2

Until the real Google Search is out of beta, and all of your thoughts are in the public domain.

And I assure you, my hat is made of denser material than tinfoil.

[Steve Taylor 3]

Help me here

What exactly do Google gain by rolling out the new system before it's finished?

If they're going to put offline editing into the new HTML5 version, why not just go ahead and implement the damn thing *before* retiring the perfectly functional current version?

I'm genuinely baffled.

[MinionZero]

Sound like a variation on Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.

1. Get users to Embrace your "free" product.

2. Extend product with online cloud services.

3. Extinguish offline functionality.

4. Profit from spying on people passing data through Google's server side spyware.

So in effect, herd users into using their online "services", where "services" is a euphemism for spying via data mining. :(