I don’t know what you mean by “service product”. But isn’t “it’s like a piece of paper but better” basically the whole pitch for a word processor like Google docs? Since when is writing not part of Google docs’ core feature set?

Meaning, Google offers Docs to you as a service, not as a consumable. You are not entitled to full control of their product, because that would be antithetical to what a service is; the point of a service is to deal with tasks so you don't have to. Storage, up to date grammar checkers & translators, and now whatever this is; these are all things that Google needs to maintain so you don't have to. The greatest control you could have over these functions is to implement them yourself, and that would defeat the point.

Unfortunately, corporations in their ruthless efficiency, don't take to the deconstructionist argument. It would appeal to a large part of the market to have streamlined templates for legal documents, marketing pitches, etc. These are all per se "pieces of paper" at the end of the day but that's not very useful to think about when 45% of your users keep using the same templates for the same purposes. I would imagine some significant segment of the userbase are politically centric marketing drones, and would love a feature like this. I think they have no taste, and that corporate centrism is a problem, but separate from actual authoritarianism; and focusing on Google misses an opportunity to focus on the root issue.

> I think that corporate centrism is a problem, but separate from actual authoritarianism; and focusing on Google misses an opportunity to focus on the root issue.

What’s the root issue, as you see it?

Docs is incredibly pervasive and changing its defaults would alter how a good number of people think. But that's not even a bad thing, it becomes quite bad when you consider that these changes are being lead more by taste than by ethics. Our social elite have confounded the two - that's the problem. Nobody knows when a word is ethical or not, but the influential certainly know when they are put off by a word. By nature of their influence, many are willing to accept at face value that their "positive" and "inclusive" attitudes are a good thing.

I can see the evangelicism now, but I think it's dumber than that. I really do think they're just competing with Grammarly or trying to streamline some process. Changing Docs isn't going to solve the issue, changing the culture is. The culture of relabeling problems as quirks, toxic positivity; and more importantly the sincere confidence in the feeling of good/right that all that entails.

Thanks for responding like this. I think I agree with what you're saying; though I'd still appreciate it if google docs wasn't walking down this road.

What you're articulating is quite a subtle cultural problem. I don't hear many people naming it or talking about it.