Google's been improving G Suite a ton, but just not "innovating" in the way the author wants.
What Google hasn't been doing is blowing up how word processors and spreadsheets work, like a "Google Wave" re-envisioning or something of them. Why? Because people understand how Word and Excel and Docs and Sheets work and don't want change.
What Google has been doing over the past ten years centers around 1) interoperability, 2) business needs, 3) intelligence and 4) performance.
For example, interoperability: you can use Google Drive File Stream to access your Drive files like a local filesystem. Or being able to comment in PDF's, or edit Office files directly without first making a copy in Docs or Sheets.
Or business needs: Google Classroom lets you use Docs with your students. Or things like document diffs and approvals. These things don't seem "innovative"... but they're necessary.
Intelligence? Look at how Sheets will automatically analyze your data to try to produce meaningful graphs. Or how Docs now fixes your spelling mistakes as you type, vastly better than e.g. autocorrect on iOS.
And performance is mainly with Sheets -- it's much better at handling large amounts of data than it used to be.
But yes, Google's been focused on giving users the features they actually need, rather than capital-I "Innovation". Because that's what users actually want.
I don't want Google trying to reimagine word processing and shoving it in my face or something.
90% of the time, Sheets's recommended graph is exactly what I wanted, and is in general a much cleaner and enjoyable experience than Excel. Pivot tables too are much more obvious and usable to non-power users in Sheets than Excel
I'm not asking Google to throw away how docs or slides work and I like the simplicity of G Suite, but look at the quarterly reports for G Suite customers and Docs will get one or two things. It's still missing tons of basic features (mixed page orientation!). Sheet's "explore" mode has been useless for me, as most AI features are. Drive File Stream is cool but the transition process was a disaster and accessing cloud files on a local machine is not exactly amazing. I would love if Google didn't try to "innovate" and focused on making improvements to what they have.
What Google hasn't been doing is blowing up how word processors and spreadsheets work, like a "Google Wave" re-envisioning or something of them. Why? Because people understand how Word and Excel and Docs and Sheets work and don't want change.
What Google has been doing over the past ten years centers around 1) interoperability, 2) business needs, 3) intelligence and 4) performance.
For example, interoperability: you can use Google Drive File Stream to access your Drive files like a local filesystem. Or being able to comment in PDF's, or edit Office files directly without first making a copy in Docs or Sheets.
Or business needs: Google Classroom lets you use Docs with your students. Or things like document diffs and approvals. These things don't seem "innovative"... but they're necessary.
Intelligence? Look at how Sheets will automatically analyze your data to try to produce meaningful graphs. Or how Docs now fixes your spelling mistakes as you type, vastly better than e.g. autocorrect on iOS.
And performance is mainly with Sheets -- it's much better at handling large amounts of data than it used to be.
But yes, Google's been focused on giving users the features they actually need, rather than capital-I "Innovation". Because that's what users actually want.
I don't want Google trying to reimagine word processing and shoving it in my face or something.