[notatoad]

if i click on a docx in the google drive app, it uses the intents system to open in quickoffice. its only if i try to open a google drive document in quickoffice that it has a problem. So if you have a technologically inept relative, the solution is simple - just tell them to use google drive for everything, and never use quickoffice.

which i'm sure is exactly what google wants. they want you creating documents in their format, not in microsoft's format. quickoffice exists to tick off the "MS Office compatibility" checkbox on spec sheets, not because google loves that file format so much. and office documents don't get the realtime collaborative editing or chat interface or any of the other stuff that drive documents get, so to reduce confusion about why some features are unavailable, it makes sense to keep it as a separate app.

[wslh]

I bet you and dragonwriter that Google will integrate both in the future.

[notatoad]

i think they will too, but i think the point is that they don't want to. Microsoft office support in Drive is like SMS support in Hangouts. They know people want it, but it's an outside-the-ecosystem technology that they want to die, and they're hoping that if they hold off supporting it for long enough demand will go away.