What I Worked On at Google
Naturally this list only includes projects I’m allowed to talk about! For many projects I was not the only person who worked on it. Projects I worked on as part of my 20% time are labeled with 20%. The projects are ordered from most to least recent.
Spearheaded the development of high-fidelity Markdown import and export for Docs, enhancing its compatibility with numerous content management systems and resulting in a user importing or exporting Markdown every second. 20%
Several news outlets took note:
Co-led a foundational rearchitecture of the Docs backend, frontend, and data model to implement tabs in Docs, including updating all cross-cutting features, resulting in ~1.75 tabs on average for recently opened documents.
Delighted users with some easter eggs in Docs. Try typing
@tictactoe
or@fourinarow
! 20%Integrated Gemini into Docs to enable GenAI content generation and rewrites, complete with headings, lists, tables, and other rich content, as a member of a large team, resulting in ~150,000 weekly usages.
Many news outlets took note:
- Forbes: Google Stock Jumps As It Puts Artificial Intelligence Into Google Docs
- Fortune: GPT-4 debuts and Google beats Microsoft in race to add generative A.I. to consumer office tools
- Reuters: Google unveils ‘magic wand’ to draft documents as AI race tightens
- The Verge: Google announces AI features in Gmail, Docs, and more to rival Microsoft
- USA Today: Google unveils new features for Docs, Gmail and more amid AI race
- The Washington Post: Google is adding AI to its work apps. Here’s what that means.
Jointly implemented code block support in Docs, including automatic Markdown detection and conversion, resulting in ~90,000 weekly code block insertions, with 25% from Markdown conversion. The Verge took note: “Google’s making code formatting a breeze in Docs”.
Independently empowered Docs users with improved data organization by developing an option to split table cells, leading to ~1.15 million weekly cell splits. 20%
Boosted Google Docs collaboration by 8% by developing a real-time email alert system, complete with subscription settings and document diffs for recent edits, that sends ~300,000 weekly emails, as a member of a 3-person team.
Increased developer productivity by implementing automatic Markdown detection and conversion for Docs, Slides, and Drawings1, resulting in ~1.2 million automatic weekly conversions. 20%
Several news outlets took note:
Simplified Docs, Slides, and Drawings authoring with shared prefix substitution rule support, and en- and em-dash substitution, resulting in a 45% increase in substitutions and no change in undo rates. 20%
Increased the width of comment threads in Docs. They were way too narrow and it was bothering me! 😅 20%
Developed dynamic Drive sharing emails that automatically update with the latest thumbnail, owner, and edit details via a high-performance endpoint handling 300 queries per second, resulting in 6% fewer short sessions from the emails.
Expanded link previews in Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings to links in comment threads. Previously, they only appeared for links in the editor itself. 20%
Streamlined finding new and important comments in Docs with comment badging and filtering, boosting reply creation and comment resolutions by 2%. USA TODAY took note: “Google Docs upgrades comments feature to make collaboration easier”.
Interned on the Sites team in the Summer of 2019 and enabled site viewers to provide feedback on published Sites.