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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17308 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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Because Google Docs already exists.

There are already free versions of all these. All of these are probably going to get better a lot quicker, but they still won't do the enterprise stuff that gets the big subscriptions

edit: this comment was made without seeing Brainwavez reply. Great minds, etc.

When Google Docs came out, Microsoft Office already existed. And these projects don't have to get massive enterprise subscriptions to have an impact, they just need to prevent other people from subscribing to existing suites.

I comment more extensively above, but Microsoft Works was a thing. And nobody bought it, because nobody wants to miss out on functionality. Google Docs has its fans, but I tried to rely on it for work (nay, a company I was contracted to wanted everyone to work in active shared documents so if work had to be reassigned someone else could jump right in) and it was brutal. I ended up just doing all my work in Office and uploading it as a Google Doc to turn it in.

I'm not sure your larger comment addresses the argument. Google Docs might not have worked out for you, but it apparently it has a billion active users. Any longpoast trying to explain why nobody wants it, is simply resting on a false premise.

Any longpoast trying to explain why nobody wants it, is simply resting on a false premise.

Google Docs apparently has 1 billion active users against 750 million for Microsoft Office. Yet, the same source says that there are only 6 million paid Google Workspace users. This is a conversion rate of 0.6%, compared to Microsoft's conversion rate of 100%, since they don't offer a free product, on 75% of Google's total user base. To put it another way, there are about 125 times as many paid Office users as paid Docs users. Also keep in mind that I would be included among those 1 billion users because there are still things I use it for, just not as a substitute for Office. But I wouldn't pay for the product, and evidently the vast majority of people are with me on that.

And that's the entire point. People have proven time and again that they aren't willing to pay for a stripped down product. The fact that they use it if given it for free is irrelevant.

Again, it doesn't matter if you generate subscriptions, it's enough if you prevent someone else from generating one. Especially that thia whole topic is about AI, and people generating their own software on the fly.

I am one of those billion active users, but as a tool that makes for easy sharing or quick projects that I do on my phone, not a replacement for Word or even Libre Office.

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