PDFs in Google Docs: just the basics on the web

I alluded to the new Google Docs support for Adobe PDF documents last night and I see the official news is out on the Google Docs Blog. You can upload local PDFs up to 10 MB, or you can provide the URL of a PDF on the web that's up to 2 MB. Basically, you've got an online PDF viewer, which is good for my web-only experiment; up to now I was using the FoxIt Reader app and haven't had time to look for an online PDF app.

Since this is a view-only implementation for now, you can only preview and share PDFs, i.e.: there's no manipulation of the contents. You can however, select text as I've done in the example shot above. Once selected, the text appears highlighted. I was able to copy the selected text to my clipboard and paste it another doc with no problems.

Comments

[Kochis]

Been following your experiment with interest, but I have not seen any information on how, or if, you are doing any office like applications in the cloud. If so, what are you using?

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Kochis, most of my writing is done here at the blog, so I simply use TypePad's web interface for that.

However, all of my recent New York Times and PC World articles have been written solely in Google Docs. I've been using the free service for at least six months now and it meets my needs. Zoho is another service worth the look and they actually support offline document editing by using Google Gears; something we covered a few months back. A third option that I've only touched upon to have a look-see is the new offering from Adobe, which is a Flash-based, limited-productivity suite.

Maybe I'll find some time to cover what Google Docs offers (and doesn't) in the near future.