Through a detailed analysis of logs of activity for
all Google employees1
, this paper shows how the
Google Docs suite (documents, spreadsheets and
slides) enables and increases collaboration within
Google. In particular, visualization and analysis
of the evolution of Google’s collaboration network
show that new employees2
, have started
collaborating more quickly and with more people
as usage of Docs has grown. Over the last two
years, the percentage of new employees who collaborate
on Docs per month has risen from 70%
to 90% and the percentage who collaborate with
more than two people has doubled from 35% to
70%. Moreover, the culture of collaboration has
become more open, with public sharing within
Google overtaking private sharing.