Google Docs originated from Writely, a web-based word processor created by the software company Upstartle and launched in August 2005.^[6][7] It began as an experiment by programmers Sam Schillace, Steve Newman, and Claudia Carpenter, trying out the then-new Ajax technology and the “contentEditable” HTML feature.^[7] On March 9, 2006, Google announced that it had acquired Upstartle.^[8][9] Google would release a new product, based on Writely, called Google documents on October 10, 2006.^[10] In July 2009, Google dropped the beta testing status from Google Docs.^[11] In March 2010, Google acquired DocVerse, an online document collaboration company. DocVerse allowed multiple users to collaborate online on Microsoft Word documents, like other Microsoft Office formats, such as Excel and PowerPoint.^[12] Improvements based on DocVerse were announced and deployed in April 2010.^[13] In June 2012, Google acquired Quickoffice, a freeware proprietary productivity suite for mobile devices.^[14] In October 2012, Google renamed the Google Drive products, and Google Documents became Google Docs. At the same time, Google Chrome App versions of Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides were released, which provided shortcuts to the service on Chrome’s new tab page.^[15] In February 2019, Google announced grammar suggestions in Docs, expanding their spell check using machine translation techniques to help catch tricky grammatical errors.^[16] In March of 2023, Google Docs