FWIW, it was actually 2006:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2006&#x2F;10&#x2F;10&#x2F;google-docs-spreadsheets-launches&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2006&#x2F;10&#x2F;10&#x2F;google-docs-spreadsheets-la...</a><p>However, the realtime collaboration described in this article came from a ground-up rewrite, really an entirely new product, that did launch in 2012 or thereabouts. The original Google Docs word processor would synchronize at intervals, on the order of every 15 to 30 seconds. The new architecture is much more realtime. It also contained a completely new approach to in-browser editing, doing away with content-editable in favor of a pure JavaScript editing+layout engine that allowed for pagination and other features not supported by browser content-editable implementations.<p>(Source: I was part of Writely - the startup that became the word processing side of Docs. We launched around June 2005, were acquired by Google in March 2006, quietly relaunched on Google infrastructure at the end of June, and I don&#x27;t recall the exact launch date of the combined &quot;Docs &amp; Spreadsheets&quot; product but October 2006, as stated in the article linked above, sounds about right. My only involvement in the rewrite was to hand that team a list of reasons I thought that what they wanted to do wasn&#x27;t possible.)