Difference between Google Drive and Google Docs

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In this digital era, without a doubt, we’re flooded with different applications for document needs. Ranging from simple note apps to storage solutions like Dropbox, google Drive we’re practiced to use in our daily routines. Anyhow, the common naming conventions in Google products can be confusing at the amateur stage. Especially, there are a lot of misconceptions between Google Drive and Google Docs. They’re not the same. Let’s break down and find out all the major differences between Google Docs vs. Google Drive in general.

Difference between Google Drive and Google Docs

Even though some of the features and methods to use those features are the same for both Google Drive and Google Docs, there are notable differences between Google Drive and Google Docs. One of the main differences is mentioned below:

Difference between google docs and google drive
What is the difference between Google Drive and Google Docs

Google Docs is an online word processor for creating, editing, and processing your documents.

On the other hand, Google Drive is a cloud-based file storage service for all popular document formats.

What is Google Docs?

Google Docs is a free online word processor and a web-based application that helps you to create, edit and store your documents online. The major advantage of Google Docs is that the documents can be accessed from anywhere and on any device. The document owner owns the entire control and can provide access or permission to other Google members for accessing their documents.

The sweetness of Google Docs is that users can upload Word or any text documents and easily able to convert them to the online editing Processor. From where, multiple people can work together on the same document, in reality, adding different pictures, adjusting specific margins, editing content quickly, etc on documents from their favorite device and location favored by internet access.

Advantages of Google Docs

The advantages that come packed with Google Docs are humongous.

  • You can easily edit and format the document with lots of smart features.
  • It has free images, fonts, templates, and drawings, special characters, etc.
  • It also has prebuilt resumes, and other different document-type templates to help you simplify your document needs.
  • Google Docs allows a group to work on the same documents at the same time.
  • Changes are saved automatically
  • It is also possible to check the history and view an older version of the same document.
  • Accessible on multiple devices such as a smartphone, tablet, or personal computer.
  • When the document is done, you can save the documents in different formats like PDF, HTML, .docx, .odt, txt, etc. You also have the options to keep them in a Zip file.

Limitations with Google Docs

  • Lack of fonts (but, newer versions are getting better)
  • It could be quite confusing for some users who are unfamiliar with it at the start having said they have limited experience working with technology.
  • Does not work seamlessly with a bad network connectivity

Hope you get a detailed idea of what Google Docs is, how it works, and what are all the advantages and limitations of Google Docs. Now let’s see what is Google Drive in detail to understand the differences between Google Docs and Google Drive.

What is Google Drive?

Google Drive is a cloud-based file storage service. Earlier, there is no possibility to share large files such as different videos, audio files, etc. Thus Google Drive came to the rescue. It helps users to store large files on their own servers, Even users can easily synchronize their files.

It allows documents of various formats such as storing video files, audio files, different images, recording files, drawings, etc. It comes baked with Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, etc to create documents, spreadsheets, ppts, etc.

Advantages of Google Drive

A few notable things you can enjoy with the Google Drive service are,

  • Google provides each Google account holder with 15 gigabytes of free storage exclusive to Google Drive.
  • Based on different paid plans, you can get an additional 100 GB, 1 TB, and many more based on your requirement.
  • You have the provision to invite other users to view, collaborate and download different files.
  • You can access your files from any location with the help of any device such as PCs, smartphones, tablets, etc.
  • Google Drive has different ways to find and view files. You can able to sort your files as well.
  • Another beauty and one of the latest features of Google Drive is, you can able to search for text from different picture files.
  • You can easily share your files with your friends, teammates, etc by modifying a few settings.

Limitations of Google Drive

  • At times, when your internet connection is bad it takes forever to upload the videos.
  • The confidentiality of the files stored is doubtful since we are storing it in the cloud. Yet Google evolved a lot when it comes to security and privacy.
  • Video uploads and downloads can be frustrating.

Having said that, Google Docs and Google Drive are completely different applications, but they can work together and can help you provide a very interesting collaboration platform to all users from around the globe.

Although Google Drive and Google Docs share various differences and similarities, they both are extremely helpful and have become one of the most unavoidable tools of the present remote+ environment.

Conclusion

Hope things are a bit clear now after reading this article. Google has developed both Google Docs and Google Drive. The main difference between Google Docs and Google Drive is, Google Docs is a free online word processor to create, edit and store documents and Google Drive is a cloud-based file storage service where you can store multiple types of large files and can able to synchronize them.