For the past couple of years, a team of engineers in Sydney has been improving and adding new features to Google Docs. Recently, our team started working to enhance the mobile Docs experience, starting with today’s launch of Google Docs for Android. Together with the design team in Tokyo, we crafted a simple user experience to deliver the best of Google Docs to your phone.
This new app will give you another way to collaborate on documents with your friends or colleagues while you're on the go. You can quickly find, create, edit and share documents, and you can open Docs from Gmail without having to enter your login credentials each time.
This new app will give you another way to collaborate on documents with your friends or colleagues while you're on the go. You can quickly find, create, edit and share documents, and you can open Docs from Gmail without having to enter your login credentials each time.
We were able to work with other members of the local Google Docs team in Sydney to pack extra features into the Android application too. The engineers here were instrumental in creating Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in Google Docs, which converts uploaded images to text. They helped us integrate that functionality into the Android app so that you can take a photo with your phone's camera, then extract the text from that into a new document. This is useful for things like collecting info from a poster or flyer, or making your own changes to a recipe your friend gave you.
The app is currently available in English and works on Android 2.1+ phones. The Sydney team is also working on more features for Google Docs that we can’t wait to share with you.
Cheers!
Posted by David Loxton, Product Manager, Google Docs
