I’ve been trying to use Google Docs for the last couple of weeks, I’m finding myself writing articles on all sorts of devices and instead of using the network I liked the idea of having a “go anywhere” article store. The first few 300-400 word pieces I did were fine. Since then it has just gotten slower and slower. How slow is Google Docs, you ask? Well whilst I’m typing away the cursor is running at least a minute behind what I type. Not only that but if you open your resource monitor you’ll notice a massive resource usage. Firefox + Google Docs consumes a HUGE 360 megabytes of memory and consumes over 50% of the processor, even when sat idle. That’s enough memory and processor usage to have every application of MS Office open at once!
Anyhoo the end result of the utter frustration from trying to use Google Docs is shown below:-
Google owe me a new keyboard, door and desk. Love Google, hate Google Docs, easily the biggest pile of shit to come out of their production offices.
And before anybody has a go, at the time I lost it I was running Google Docs through Firefox on a very good spec PC, with nothing else using the internet, over a faster than average broadband connection. I could have cleared my cookies, bent over and done all sorts of other crap but frankly if that’s what is needed in order to use Google Docs then I’d rather not bother.
To answer the question then, Google Docs is so slow because it has been programmed by a bunch of useless bastards. I’m going to go and put my hand in some ice now until the swelling goes down.
Think I’ll stick to MS Word and Open Office from now on.
6 Responses to “Why Is Google Docs So Slow?”
Chris
March 16, 2010
Do you not use Chrome? I ONLY ever use FF for SEO research and chrome for everything else
|.-= Chris´s last blog ..Update: Where have I been? =-.
Paul B
March 16, 2010
I’ve used Chrome in the past but I just prefer the look of pages rendered in Firefox, dunno why really. I did try Docs with Chrome just to see if it was a problem with the browser but the result was/is the same. Slower than a slow thing on a slow day with massive resource usage.
A network sniffer shows the culprit, you need a very fast connection with a good ping speed to make Google Docs viable
Either that or just don’t try and edit in it, use it for storage only.
|Internetguy
July 20, 2010
You owe me remuneration for my time spent writing your shitty whining blog entry.
|Jon Beck
August 25, 2010
I agree that Google Docs is too slow.
Also, Google Docs also does not always translate documents to and from Office correctly.
I stopped using Chrome because it hogged system resources and didn’t have nearly as many add ons as Firefox.
|Rob Prem
October 14, 2010
I was originally using Internet Explorer in google docs, but after this posting I have been using Chrome, and so far so good with google docs…it is back to normal speeds….thanks
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