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No Markdown support in Google Drive after all these years

122 points by adrianvoica ↗ HN
Why does Google not (want to?) support the full Markdown experience in Google Drive? I'm not talking about the limited, mostly useless support in Docs, but supporting opening, reading / editing real (.MD extension) files. Just, why?

106 comments

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Zetobal
Nobody gets promoted over supporting open source standards at google anymore... well except maybe in some parts of their backend.
ggm
I don't think they'd actually remove the functionality of it was added but I bet adding it would be an uphill struggle
thorncorona
Phrase it the other way, why would they want to support a markdown editor in google drive?
adrianvoica
I think lots of people would keep their (plain text markdown) notes in Drive instead of using yet another tool / app / service for that. Besides, having unencrypted text files at your disposal (for... I don't know... peeking into?) would be an absolute win.
ThrowawayTestr
There's already Google Keep for notes.
adrianvoica
I use that since day one, I love it as a product. But still, this is not about notes, it's about supporting a simple, text-based file format.
layer8
Unencrypted would rather be a loss for data privacy.
adrianvoica
Besides the pure textual representation of such files (.md, .txt), you still have the same problem for any (natively) supported Docs file format. It is, somehow, in the user's own option to use Drive as a repo for ultra-sensitive info or avoid it (but, unfortunately, this informed opinion applies more often to the more tech-savvy people).
indymike
Actually, Google drive does work with Markdown. I store markdown there all the time. (after all markdown is just text)
RadiozRadioz
Simple: if you make your documents in Markdown, you won't be making them in Google Docs. Stuff made in Google Docs is sticky, increases your dependence on Google, and importantly has a valuable network effect due to their collaboration features. It is in Google's best interest to encourage you to rely on their proprietary services instead of offering you alternatives that allow you to switch provider easily.

Additionally, the "people who know what Markdown is but also like trusting Google with their files" demographic is vanishingly small and not who Drive is targeting at all.

adrianvoica
'Additionally, the "people who know what Markdown is but also like trusting Google with their files" demographic is vanishingly small and not who Drive is targeting at all.' <--this 200%
danielbln
It's just not true at all. Knowing/using markdown doesn't make you some Richard Stallmann type.
pluijzer
Maybe the original author implies that you don't need to be a Richard Stallman type anymore, not to trust Google.
DangitBobby
HN/Reddit is a bit of a bubble. Most people trust Google just fine with their files.
coldtea
People who think Markdown users are a demographic major enough to matter in the context of the Google Drive userbase are also in a bit of a bubble...
indymike
I agree with this. Most people have know idea what markdown is, and if they do use it, it is usually the text format behind a WYSIWYG editor... Some examples: Slack, Github...
SahAssar
"people who know what Markdown is" overlaps very much with "people who have to use google docs for work but would prefer a consistent editing experience". Basically every dev I know has to use either teams/sharepoint/office or google docs, but most are also more comfortable with using markdown and use it for technical docs.

I'd love to have a google docs option of creating a "simple doc", that is backed by markdown and only supports the basics (headers, paragraphs, lists, maybe tables) and have a WYSIWYG for non-tech people and a (maybe git-based?) workflow for people used to markdown.

Something like what azure devops and github does with their wikis.

watwut
Yes, pretty much this. I use Sharepoint and teams because I have to, not because I would think they are good or because I liked them. Sharepoint in particular is horrible, Teams are only slightly better.

I want markdown on sharepoint.

aquaticsunset
Try Loop, if your organization has been enabled for it. It's exactly what people here are wishing Google Drive had.
noisy_boy
> Basically every dev I know has to use either teams/sharepoint/office or google docs

I think there is another sizable set which heavily uses wiki. At my work, most people use it (a very small set of people use SharePoint for mainly PowerPoint or formatting heavy docs).

SahAssar
Are those devs not ever collaborating with non-tech people on documents? Also when you say wiki, do you mean a mediawiki instance or the ones included in things like github?
danielvaughn
+1, I love google docs and also love markdown. If there was a shared markdown editor with the same collaborative features as google docs, i'd probably never use anything else.
hiddew
We use Slite extensively at work. Works pretty well to quickly create/edit documents with a nice editor. When you type Markdown, the content automatically resolves the styling/headers/lists. Multiple persons editing a document at the same time is (of course) supported. And every document can be exported as Markdown or PDF.
indymike
Sounds a lot like something like Notion?
fastball
Notion doesn't use Markdown.
indymike
Just type in markdown :-). It mostly works for input.
fastball
Sure, you can add asterisks around things and it will convert stuff to bold, etc, but Notion isn't actually a markdown-based app – the underlying representation of a Notion doc is stored as JSON.
SahAssar
Notion is very sluggish and feels very unlike a markdown file-based system to me.
danielvaughn
Agreed, I like certain aspects of Notion, but as a FE dev myself, I think what they’re trying to do is too complex. I don’t see how they could ever make it performant.
mholm
Product with corporate lock-in, but Quip allows the user to use markdown in their documents, and export their documents into Markdown.
sharma-arjun
Dropbox Paper should meet your requirements. I tried switching to it a few years ago, but the problem is that the other people I'm collaborating with always want to use Google Docs, and when I'm writing a document by myself, I'd much rather just write to a local file.
grumblepeet
SharePoint pages can now be created with Markdown BTW. There is a Markdown web part out of the box. Not so sure how Markdown files themselves are handled though, pretty badly I suspect.
e40
Agree completely with the first paragraph and disagree completely with the second paragraph.

There are lots of us who use Google drive at work that love md.

afavour
I’m a developer working at a company that uses GSuite. My personal feelings about trusting Google aren’t really relevant, I’d love to use Markdown in GDoc, as would many of my coworkers!
m-p-3
I'd be happy if only they supported the CommonMark format properly in GChat..
moffkalast
There are dozens of you.
IshKebab
Outside of HN, people that actually avoid giving Google any data are almost nonexistent. People that use Markdown definitely aren't. There's a huge number of pragmatic developers that use Markdown and Google.
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coldtea
Seems like people can't fathom that "developers" in general are an insignificant demographic. Google Drive is used by a billion or more (including most Android users).

Developers are a handful of millions. Developers that use markdown outside of where they're forced to and actively want Google Drive to support it are even fewer.

RadiozRadioz
Apologies, that part was primarily intended for home users. Google certainly isn't targeting that demographic, there are much larger ones to go after.

If you're forced to use Drive at work, Google isn't targeting you either. It's targeting the C-suites above you who buy the software, and they don't know what Markdown is. The fact that engineers are lamenting the lack of Markdown in Google Drive shows how much influence they have over those decisions.

coldtea
>Agree completely with the first paragraph and disagree completely with the second paragraph. There are lots of us who use Google drive at work that love md.

That's not incompatible with the demographic being vanishingly small and not who Drive is targeting at all.

"A lot of us" can still be an insignificant number compared to the Google Drive userbase and target demographic.

Now, "more than 10% of Google Drive users" might start getting somewhere. But I doubt it's even close to 1%. Google Drive is not a tool targeted to developers especially, and developers are not that much of a demographic to matter for mass market services.

KnobbleMcKnees
I've seen virtually no use of Google Drive in the wild in my personal life. I've worked at 10k+ orgs that use it exclusively and every minute of every day.

I'm not sure where you're getting those stats but a source would be nice. I would suspect that their customer base and/or core usage is made up of far more tech company employees via Cloud and Workspaces than it is average Joes backing up documents.

coldtea
>I've seen virtually no use of Google Drive in the wild in my personal life

That's what I call a bubble.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17613442/google-drive-one...

And that's in 2023.

As for the numbers of organizational paying users in 2023 (corporate users) were 6 million, compared to "over a billion" (in 2023). And of those 6 million organizational users of course only a smaller share are developers. Regular file sharing and G-suite stuff for office workers is the order of the day.

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jehb
> I've seen virtually no use of Google Drive in the wild in my personal life.

Really? I'm curious, are the people you know using Dropbox, OneDrive, or something else? Or are they just not sharing files in a public cloud?

I started to retort "how do you even collaborate on spreadsheets with your friends?" before realizing maybe I just have some, err, unique friend groups.

KnobbleMcKnees
Our friend group also use spreadsheets to decide who is bringing what to the BBQ.

In the non tech-centric groups of friends and family, filesystem solutions have been superceded by all-in-ones like Google/Apple Photos, Notes etc.

Most people I know also use an iPhone meaning they're driven towards data storage that is built around an app use case, rather than simulating a desktop FS on another device.

Many of them use Google or Microsoft solutions for work though.

hooverd
What's a good wiki with Markdown support? I hate how Confluence doesn't have it, and Jira sort of has it, even though they're supposed to be integrated. Preferably close to GFMD.
bippihippi1
that demographic is also likely to have an outaized effect on evangelizing cool new features and getting people to swap over from other products. how much google is trying to grow vs curb competition is the question.
indymike
Google docs can only represent a subset of the document formatting and features in markdown (yes, there are html literals in markdown, but even then it isn't enough). Markdown could be an import/export format... but I can't see it working well with the Docs editor.
ELBeavers
It's a bit like asking why Markdown isn't supported in Microsoft Word or Apple Pages. Environmental lock-in.
quickthrower2
docx is pretty portable as it goes. getting stuff converted (downsampled; in a sense) to markdown is easy enough.
scrollaway
Google Drive is a perfect example of today's Google. "Good enough -- just barely".

It could be a very fast, efficient file browser with lots of format previews. It's not.

Doing basic "file manager" things such as viewing/extracting files from a .zip, editing a plain-text file, or viewing markdown… all those are just "too complicated" for a small indie company like Google.

Drive is incredibly powerful, and yet it's just awful compared to what it could be. If someone one day makes a "better web UI" for Drive with better functionality, but that still uses google drive in the backend, damn I want in.

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jxdxbx
Drive totally chokes if you have tons of tiny files. Lots of things do but Drive is the worst I have seen. I unwisely tried to put a full MAME set on Drive once, and then deleted it. The files never got “deleted” but rather were still in my drive, but not associated with any particular folder, so I could search for them but not see them any other way. Another time, lots of files ended up in Trash, but Drive was unable to ever actually empty the trash.

One thing that bites me every few months is that on iOS, the Google Drive file provider extension does not support basic operations. Like I think I have tried to just save a file to Google Drive via Files and it never uploaded. It’s not just that this stuff works with iCloud Drive, but also with Dropbox, Box, and even SFTP shares mounted via Secure Shellfish.

scrollaway
Indeed. The web UI is awful at this. If you look at the devtools when you select many files, you can see that there's one synchronous web request per file.
esprehn
It's not synchronous, sync xhr on the web is pretty rare these days.
jxdxbx
I’d frame it more as just text files…I can edit Word documents (as Word documents, not converted) that are stored on Google Drive, in Google Docs. One that feature was added, support for plain text should have been added as well.

That being said Google Doc’s support for Word documents is confusing as hell. I wish at least it was made to be more visually distinct since people (such as: me) get confused all the time between editing a Google Doc, a Word document converted to Google Docs (where now there are likely two branched versions of the same document), and just using the Google Docs interface to edit a Word document directly.

mrweasel
Why should they? For your use-case, and mine, sure by all means add it. For the average user: "Why is Google Drive showing my text big a bigger font when I start a line with #"

There's zero benefit for them to add it, and the majority of people who want markdown probably aren't using Google Drive to render their documents.

adrianvoica
Probably so. I agree. From a simple UX/UI perspective, there's the "+" button (for creating new Drive items), so, adding "New Markdown Document" or "New Text Document" would bring some clarity. But still... that broad majority is probably using the service in a totally different way.
modeless
They have a whole app store for Google Drive. There are markdown editors in there as well as plenty of other niche things. https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2500820
adrianvoica
Sure, if you are trusting 3rd party access to your data. Yet another layer of trust for a (niche) service that might just vanish into thin air. No, thank you.
adrianvoica
It's not like Markdown is some rare, unheard of format. I think it's the most used file format for technical docs / content / notes these days, and it's here to stay (because it's simple, it's easy and it's portable). Besides, most well-known note-taking services and apps are based on Markdown, or they export losslessly to Markdown.
rchaud
> I think it's the most used file format for technical docs / content / notes

That's why Atlassian supports MD for Jira and Confluence. Google Docs is first and foremost a Word Online competitor.

z3t4
There are probably 1000 markdown editors out there ranging from a simple textarea that only lets you write text, to Emacs, and something like Msword on steroids. The nice thing about an open market is that when you no longer like a product you can just switch to another one.

I however understand your issue with privacy as any app can just steal your content without you knowing. The solution for privacy is to sandbox/jail the app into an environment where it can just access a limited set of resources, for example you can use an apparmor profile where the app can just access a special folder, and disable all networking. That special folder could be your google drive mount.

stewbrew
Get yourself an old-fashioned web-space, setup a nextcloud instance ... profit.
adrianvoica
Already using a Synolgy DSM server - and it's a great experience - but, most (the rest) of the world is running on Google services, this is the reality, so, when it comes to sharing and collaboration capabilities, you're kinda stuck on the outside. I don't really like spreading too thin by using a ton of (more or less overlapping) services instead of using just one (Drive).
h_mirin
Even in 2021, Google Workspace had more than 3 billion users. I believe that 99% of these individuals had no clue what Markdown was. If they had, perhaps third-party apps that can connect to Google Drive, such as StackEdit, would be much more popular now.
xnx
Google Drive doesn't directly support editing of text files either.
z3t4
You just open a markdown editor, that has built in Google Drive support. And edit from there.
adrianvoica
You are missing the point. I am spending most of my day inside VS Code, using it for writing Markdown content as well. Apples to oranges. I don't want the author of some 3rd party obscure app looking at my content without my consent. I don't say I trust Google 100%, but I trust Google more than 3rd parties that I know nothing about.
z3t4
Also see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36466406#36467459

Why do you trust Google and Microsoft, companies known to spy on their users, rather then some small company who would go under if someone found out they spied on their users?

I'm not saying everyone that's using Google or Microsoft are stupid, I'm trying to understand why people trust Google and Microsoft, is it because so many are already using them, or is it that you have been using them for a long time because you had no other choice ?

oofnik
Markdown is a markup language. Google Docs is a WYSIWYG document editor. These are two fundamentally different approaches to the creation of written content.

This question is kind of like asking why you can't edit Illustrator projects in Photoshop.

adrianvoica
This was not about Google Docs at all, but about Google Drive. As anybody knows, you can let 3rd party apps do extra stuff with your Drive content, but the point is: why not natively support Markdown inside Drive. Besides, text content is also content.
frithsun
I rented to a meth addict once upon a time.

After we finally evicted him, the house was strewn with several ambitious but abandoned projects.

Almost as bad as Google.

wfhBrian
And no support for collapsing/folding text under headings...
angelmm
Maybe they’re planning to shutdown Google Drive as it is and focus more on the “Office suite” experience. More oriented towards business case, and MD is not a priority for this at all.
gordian-not
If we're already there, what about SVG support in slides?
2OEH8eoCRo0
Which Markdown flavor would they support? My issue with Markdown is that is at least a half dozen different ways of rendering Markdown.
adrianvoica
At least the default, non-opinionated flavor, without the tables and math formula support and stuff like that.
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andyp-kw
I'm still waiting for the Google Drive app for Linux.
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pjmlp
Well, why should they?

I find more critical that for all the dependecy on COM, the IDL editing experience in Visual Studio still sucks after about 30 years, and is basically like editing bare bones text files.

bemusedthrow75
What, specifically, is "the full Markdown experience"?

Both figuratively and literally.

bschwindHN
I dunno, why can't I add a WebP image to a google slides presentation?
bsmth
I presume you're looking to add a .md file and have editor / docs support, but there is this in case anyone is looking to write a limited subset of markdown in a Google doc:

https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12014036?hl=en

It's not great, but you'll find it useful if you have the muscle memory of `* thing` for bullet lists and `## My section` for headings.