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Google Shifts Editing From Drive to Docs and Sheets In 'Confusing' Switch
GottaBeMobile offers a better explanation than many other reports of a recent Google upgrade (some users would say more of a lateral move) that makes offline document creation and editing a first-class option for users of Google's office apps, but removes editing capabilities from Google Drive per se. Instead of creating or editing documents directly through Drive, users will instead be able to do this (including offline) with a dedicated app called Docs and Sheets. The article explains a few ways in which the new configuration is confusing, including this one: "Splitting out the editing functionality from Google Drive into the new Apps certainly seems odd given that fundamentally there are no new or different editing features offered in the new Google Docs and Google Sheets standalone Apps. Some users won’t appreciate having to download the new stand alone Apps to replace previous functionality, especially limited functionality."
Google has always had a "too many direction change" problem as their meritocracy sometimes tries things, and then end up giving up one idea to try another. If they really are an always profitable company, why is ticker GOOG in existance?
I think it makes sense if you consider that Microsoft and Google are starting to make peace with each other. Microsoft recently officially gave their blessing to using office.com on Chrome and ChromeOS. So, imagine now that maybe you'll be able to save and edit actual word docs in Drive using Office and that perhaps Microsoft will also be opening its own Skydrive (or whatever they're calling it now) up to other document types? I admit it's a stretch, but given the new focus on the cloud from Microsoft, it could happen. This also makes more sense from the "merging Android and Chrome" point of view as well as mobile tends to favor smaller, single purpose apps.
I find this is a common corporate problem, eventually a product just peaks out and does what it's meant to do, then you're left with a bunch of people who helped get it there left with nothing to do. So they keep trying to improve it beyond where it was already perfect, in the process breaking it, maybe because they don't realise they're finished or maybe because they need a justification to stay in employment. So we end up with buggy bloated pieces of crap. Office is one such product, there's very little a business needs that can't be done perfectly well using Office 97.
My uninformed guess is that they realized that most people didn't know that the 'Google Drive' app was for document editing, and with the release of Office for iPad they wanted to make they had a visible competitor.