Sharing a document online is not something many people do yet. And for those of us with our toes in the water, it is usually a one-off thing. You want to share a spreadsheet around a single event, or are working with someone outside your organization. But as you get used to it, you become more comfortable and start using Google Docs more frequently or find one or two people who really like to work that way. At least that is what Google is hoping will happen, which is why it is making it easier for power sharers to use Google Docs by sharing entire folders. You can also now bulk upload multiple documents at once, instead of doing it one by one.
Before today, you could only upload and share documents one at a time. Now you can just dump as many as you like into a shared folder and share the whole set. (See details here). I can see shared folders now becoming shared workspaces on Google Docs. It’s kind of like Dropbox in that way. Actually, I’m surprised it took Google so long to introduce such basic features. If Google Docs is going to scale across the Web, it needs to encourage each user to upload and share as many docs as possible as a regular part of their workday.
But then, maybe we weren’t quite ready for it until now. Or maybe Google wasn’t. In any case, it’s been a highly-requested feature. Let the sharing begin.