The reason why Google Docs users portray themselves as 'anonymous animals'

O Google Docs it makes thousands of people curious every day because of the anonymous animals to represent the users. There are several colorful animals, in the form of a drawing, to identify the people who access the documents. Imagine sharing a document link and suddenly a panda accesses the platform? Well… calm down! There's a reason for that.

Anonymous Pets on Google Docs

Although the mighty Google doesn't leave anything explicit about the case, it doesn't take an expert to understand that other people are accessing the document at the same time.

Actually, that's not the question, but why Google chose anonymous icons.

Even if the owner of the file is not seeing it, it is important to know that all users have an icon and there is no way to choose between them as a kind of avatar.

Photo: Google.

Anonymous images serve to identify that other people, who were not added as guests, are accessing the document, when we allow the link to be shared.

The “anyone with the link” option allows other users to access the file even without being invited. That is, when anonymous icons appear, know that they are not your guests.

The email invitation happens when we add someone else's Gmail address when sharing the file. In these cases, the Google username and photo appear.

Anonymous pets idea

Information from a report by Mental Floss, published in 2012, reveals that the icons were a fun idea to entertain platform users. Were it not for custom icons, a numeric identifier would be used to represent anonymous access.

Of course, it's not a bad thing to have a panda or a raccoon as an icon representing access to your document. In fact, it can even be fun, right?

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