I spend a lot of my time in the Google ecosystem. I am a heavy user of Gmail, the Chrome browser, Calendar, Reader, Buzz, Picasa, and Docs. Yes, this pretty much means I am intellectual property of Google; but for now I am willing to live with the trade off because of the excellent interface and mobility these cloud-based products offer.

However, lately I’m finding the one hangup to all of this is Google Docs. For example, while Chrome is on a lightning-fast development pace (in just over a year they are already testing a version 5.0) Docs seems to be crawling along. This runs counter to many news reports that Docs would get significant improvements this year – making it a competitor to Microsoft’s Office suite. Most posts I see on the Google Docs blog are about some new template to help organize your NCAA bracket or plan a wedding – not a new feature release.

Docs is a great opportunity to get more users into the Google world. It makes being productive with the same series of documents between my desktop, laptop, and iPhone very easy. And now with the latest version of Documents To Go, I can edit and sync my docs (editing in the mobile browser is only available for Gooogle Spreadsheets).

But when sitting at my computer Docs feels like a weak, stripped-down word processor. Yes, the collaboration features are excellent. But more than a paucity of font choices would be nice. Entering images, graphics, or tweaking the margins are far more streamlined in a desktop word processor like Word or OpenOffice.

If Google wants to keep users in its ecosystem longer, then it is time to strengthen Docs. It is the only weak link in an otherwise excellent suite of services.