TechCrunch posted an article about the interface overhaul over at Google Documents, welcoming the introduction of 'folders'. In this article, Duncan Riley, talks about how it's great that Google is finally embracing folders and wonders whether or not Google will make the move to folders in Gmail. What Duncan does not realize, though, is that these are not folders. These are labels (or tags, whichever you prefer), just like in Gmail. How do you tell folders and labels (or tags) apart? With folders, you can only put a single document into a single folder. With labels (or tags), on the other hand, a document can exist 'in' multiple labels. Why is Google calling these folders if they are in fact labels? Google is calling this feature folders in Google Documents because your average user does not understand tagging. In fact, Google neglected to go with the norm and call Gmail's labels tags. There are two reason that Google may have done this: 1. Google likes to be different - "Everyone else calls them tags, let's call them labels" 2. Google understands that users have no clue what tags are so they tried to come up with another word that was easier to understand, but wasn't 'folders' so that users didn't think they could only apply one label to a conversation. Does Google use tags, labels or 'folders' anywhere else? They sure do. Google Reader originally had labels, if my memory serves me, but with it's latest overhaul a few months ago, they nixed labels for a more understandable (to the average user) 'folders'. You can still add a feed to more than one folder, thus making them labels (or tags). Below, I created 2 separate 'folders' and added a single document to both of them.