Google Docs is Google's "software as a service" version of an office suite. Documents, spreadsheets, forms and presentations can be created within the application itself, imported through the web interface, or sent via email. They can also be saved to the user's computer in a variety of formats (ODF, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, Word). By default, they are saved to the Google servers. Open documents are automatically saved to prevent data loss, and a revision history is automatically kept. Documents can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes. The service is officially supported on recent versions of the Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome browsers running on Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, and Linux operating systems.^[14]

There is a limit on how much a user can store on their account. Individual documents may not exceed 250 MB as of jan 13 2010, embedded images must not exceed 2MB each, and spreadsheets are limited to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, and 99 sheets.^[15][16] A user can have a total of 5,000 documents and presentations, 5,000 images, 1,000 spreadsheets, and 100 PDFs at one time.^[17] In September 2009, an equation editor was added which allows rendering in LaTeX format.

Google Docs serves as a collaborative tool for editing amongst users and non-users in real time. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time. In the case of spreadsheets, users can be notified of changes to any specified regions via e-mail. The application supports the ISO standard OpenDocument format. It also includes support for proprietary formats such as .doc and .xls^[18] as well as support for .docx and .xlsx. ^[19]

Google Docs is amongst many cloud computing document-sharing services^[20]. The majority of document-sharing services require user fees, whereas Google Docs is free. Its popularity amongst businesses is growing due to enhanced sharing features and accessibility.^[21]

Google Docs can be used (viewing and editing) in offline mode using Google Gears.