14 DAY TRIAL // Google and cloud computing don't really need another failure but that seems to be the case as users are reporting issues with Google Docs after the recent update. The problems have been acknowledged by the search giant and, while not on the scale of Gmail outages, they are preventing users from printing documents or exporting and importing files. Google is apparently working on a fix but it isn't clear if it has managed to alleviate the problems yet.
The company has just rolled out several new features for its online office suite bringing some much appreciated tools like bulk uploading and the ability to share entire folders. Unfortunately the update brought some less appreciated bugs preventing users from doing some of the most basic tasks and most likely causing a lot of grief to those relying solely on the suite.
Google is apparently working on fixing the issues but has not provided any more updates or a timeline for when to expect the problems to be fixed. “We're continuing to work on this issue, but wanted to provide an update. We discovered some latency (slow response) issues in the conversion process used in the upload and printing/export features of Docs, which caused some of the symptoms seen,” a Google representative wrote on the Google Docs Help discussion forum. “We've made some improvements and we're still working on a complete fix.”
Separately, Google has temporarily disabled one of the new touted features, the multiple file upload, though it's unclear if this is related to the other issues. “We wanted to let you know that we've temporarily removed the ability to upload multiple files. We plan to return this functionality to the Docs list again soon, so thanks for bearing with us. We will let you know once it's available again,” another Google representative wrote.
Google Docs is a free web-based application available to everyone but it is also bundled as part of the paid Google Apps, the company's enterprise offering. The search giant has been hit with a string of issues lately, especially surrounding its Gmail service, also a part of Google Apps, and several other recent incidents surrounding cloud computing haven't been helping the cause very much either.