No Markdown assist in Google Drive in spite of everything these years

Phil Tadros · June 25, 2023

2023-06-25 04:35:53

Simple: if you make your documents in Markdown, you won’t be making them in Google Docs. Stuff made in Google Docs is sticky, increases your dependence on Google, and importantly has a valuable network effect due to their collaboration features. It is in Google’s best interest to encourage you to rely on their proprietary services instead of offering you alternatives that allow you to switch provider easily.

Additionally, the “people who know what Markdown is but also like trusting Google with their files” demographic is vanishingly small and not who Drive is targeting at all.

“people who know what Markdown is” overlaps very much with “people who have to use google docs for work but would prefer a consistent editing experience”. Basically every dev I know has to use either teams/sharepoint/office or google docs, but most are also more comfortable with using markdown and use it for technical docs.

I’d love to have a google docs option of creating a “simple doc”, that is backed by markdown and only supports the basics (headers, paragraphs, lists, maybe tables) and have a WYSIWYG for non-tech people and a (maybe git-based?) workflow for people used to markdown.

Something like what azure devops and github does with their wikis.

Yes, pretty much this. I use Sharepoint and teams because I have to, not because I would think they are good or because I liked them. Sharepoint in particular is horrible, Teams are only slightly better.

I want markdown on sharepoint.

‘Additionally, the “people who know what Markdown is but also like trusting Google with their files” demographic is vanishingly small and not who Drive is targeting at all.’ <–this 200%

It’s not like Markdown is some rare, unheard of format. I think it’s the most used file format for technical docs / content / notes these days, and it’s here to stay (because it’s simple, it’s easy and it’s portable). Besides, most well-known note-taking services and apps are based on Markdown, or they export losslessly to Markdown.

I’d frame it more as just text files…I can edit Word documents (as Word documents, not converted) that are stored on Google Drive, in Google Docs. One that feature was added, support for plain text should have been added as well.

That being said Google Doc’s support for Word documents is confusing as hell. I wish at least it was made to be more visually distinct since people (such as: me) get confused all the time between editing a Google Doc, a Word document converted to Google Docs (where now there are likely two branched versions of the same document), and just using the Google Docs interface to edit a Word document directly.

Why should they? For you use-case, and mine, sure by all means add it. For the average user: “Why is Google Drive should my text big a bigger font when I start a line with #”

There’s zero benefit for them to add it, and the majority of people who want markdown probably aren’t using Google Drive to render their documents.

Probably so. I agree. From a simple UX/UI perspective, there’s the “+” button (for creating new Drive items), so, adding “New Markdown Document” or “New Text Document” would bring some clarity. But still… that broad majority is probably using the service in a totally different way.

Even in 2021, Google Workspace had more than 3 billion users. I believe that 99% of these individuals had no clue what Markdown was. If they had, perhaps third-party apps that can connect to Google Drive, such as StackEdit, would be much more popular now.

I think lots of people would keep their (plain text markdown) notes in Drive instead of using yet another tool / app / service for that. Besides, having
unencrypted text files at your disposal (for… I don’t know… peeking into?) would be an absolute win.

Besides the pure textual representation of such files (.md, .txt), you still have the same problem for any (natively) supported Docs file format. It is, somehow, in the user’s own option to use Drive as a repo for ultra-sensitive info or avoid it (but, unfortunately, this informed opinion applies more often to the more tech-savvy people).

Already using a Synolgy DSM server – and it’s a great experience – but, most (the rest) of the world is running on Google services, this is the reality, so, when it comes to sharing and collaboration capabilities, you’re kinda stuck on the outside. I don’t really like spreading too thin by using a ton of (more or less overlapping) services instead of using just one (Drive).

Google Drive is a perfect example of today’s Google. “Good enough — just barely”.

It could be a very fast, efficient file browser with lots of format previews. It’s not.

Doing basic “file manager” things such as viewing/extracting files from a .zip, editing a plain-text file, or viewing markdown… all those are just “too complicated” for a small indie company like Google.

Drive is incredibly powerful, and yet it’s just awful compared to what it could be. If someone one day makes a “better web UI” for Drive with better functionality, but that still uses google drive in the backend, damn I want in.

Drive totally chokes if you have tons of tiny files. Lots of things do but Drive is the worst I have seen. I unwisely tried to put a full MAME set on Drive once, and then deleted it. The files never got “deleted” but rather were still in my drive, but not associated with any particular folder, so I could search for them but not see them any other way. Another time, lots of files ended up in Trash, but Drive was unable to ever actually empty the trash.

One thing that bites me every few months is that on iOS, the Google Drive file provider extension does not support basic operations. Like I think I have tried to just save a file to Google Drive via Files and it never uploaded. It’s not just that this stuff works with iCloud Drive, but also with Dropbox, Box, and even SFTP shares mounted via Secure Shellfish.

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