System Design: Google Docs

Problem statement

Imagine two students preparing a report on a project they had just completed. As the students live apart, one student requests the other to start report writing while the other will improve the received copy. Although quite motivated, soon, the group understands the mess such collaboration has become. The following illustration shows how tedious the process can get.

The above scenario is one example that leads to time wastage and frustration when users collaborate on a document by merely exchanging files with each other.

Google docs

To combat the problem above, we can use an online collaborative document editing service like Google docs. Some advantages of using an online document editing service instead of a desktop ...