How Google Docs Proved the Power of Less

THE CLICHÉ HAS it that sufficiently advanced technologies are indistinguishable from magic. But if you agree with Dan McKinley’s quietly influential essay “Choose Boring Technology,” the desired end state of technologies isn’t to keep being magical but to become boring. Magic relies on the element of surprise, but the last thing you want on a

BEFORE EXAMINING GOOGLE Docs’ features, it’s worth acknowledging that all software features are the product of kleptomania, which in this field is rampantly practiced and knowingly forgiven. Google Docs’ edit history feature comes from, of course, Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” feature, which can find its elementary form in WordPerfect. And

Google Docs shows that great software programs hew more to a logic of elimination than of addition.