How does Google Docs store documents (on the backend)?

Question

I half imagine there being these great .docs in the sky... but another part of me doubts that my documents are even being stored in anything we'd traditionally call a "file." Does Google have its own document format? I feel like it must. Some branch of some existing format like ODF, maybe? Any idea what it's like, what's special about it (if anything), and/or why it is the way it is?

Answer 1

I would guess that google definitly extracts some information for indexing from the file. For editing purposes however, I do not think the internal format will be so much different from ODF/MS-Office or other file formats. But those are only guesses, maybe someone else knows more.

Answer 2

As far as I'm aware, Google Docs originally generated RTF files. Now, however, with the recent push of HTML5 and integration of the ContentEditable module, they may very well just store documents as plain HTML within their database.