Try it free: For 7 days, you can read my new monthly series, Columns I’m Not Allowed to Post Publicly. These are the jokes, drafts, and behind-the-scenes stories my editor, lawyer, and common sense told me not to share. Google ran afoul of its “don’t be evil” promise long before it dropped that motto from its code of conduct in 2018. It began wreaking evil on March 9, 2006, when it ruined the written language by launching Google Docs. The first time an editor asked me to use Google Docs, I was impressed by its superior spell check to Microsoft Word, its simple cloud storage, and its not-charging-money-ness. Then I got her edits. One of the best editors I ever had was Richard Corliss, who was not an editor. In fact, he hated it. He was one of Time’s film critics and loved his job so much he wore these custom-made shoes to the office every day:
He was nice, but resented everything that took him away from typing. When Time Inc. moved everyone off his floor for a massive renovation, he dragged a fold-out desk to the down-to-the-support-beams floor so he could write and smoke in peace. When the Arts editor would go on vacation, and the three other people who normally filled in weren’t available, Richard would have to edit. You’d send him your article, and instead of crossing out lines, moving paragraphs, or adding sentences, he would not alter a word. Instead, he sent you an email. That email would contain suggestions. Ideas you hadn’t thought about. Questions that might be worth investigating. Restructuring. Cutting. They weren’t mechanical. They were insights. I always looked forward to them. Especially because he didn’t care at all if you listened to them. The edit I got through Google Docs was the complete opposite. There were lots of comments. They each needed to be resolved. As if there were errors in my code. Once those errors were fixed, my product would be ready to be shipped. It was an engineer’s way of thinking about writing. There’s no space on Google Docs for a deep discussion. Sure, you can insert a big idea as a comment if you can keep it short, but it’s still just another error to be fixed. Google Docs encourages editors to bang their first reactions into the document as they go instead of reading it first. This makes them more efficient. And stupid. Editing on Google Docs is a fine system for amending contracts. It’s a fine system for creating the Constitution of your country. It’s an awful way to make something beautiful. If that’s not evil enough, I don’t want to know what else Big Tech has been up to. Sign up for my new series, Columns I’m Not Allowed to Post Publicly, in which I’ll divulge: Thank you for paying to read my column. Wait: This is for the people who didn’t pay? Then I owe you nothing. You are the ones contributing to the end of my career. If you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get one extra post a month – which often won’t even be that good – upgrade to a paid subscription here:
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Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Google Docs Is Evil
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