This paradigm is commonly referred to as a WYSISYG (what you see is what you get) environment. It is understood that the page will print exactly like it displays in the visual editor -- and it comes with some benefits and some drawbacks.
For document editors that follow the WYSIWYG paradigm, it's useful to understand the exact way text will display without an intermediate rendering step or typesetting step. The document editor model of Google Docs and Microsoft Word is technically WYSIWYG -- but is purpose-built to produce a printed page as output, rather than the modern web. As a result, it is extremely difficult to use Docs or Word to produce anything that is presentation-worthy to an online audience.

# When did document editors move online?

Microsoft announced Office Online in 2008, released a preview in 2009, and released to the public in 2010. In many ways, Microsoft fell substantially behind Google, who was able to release the first version of Google Docs in 2006 after acquiring a service called Writely, produced by a company called Upstartle.
The benefits of working with a document editor online were immediately apparent. The two biggest advantages of an online document editor are:

1. Collaborate easily with colleagues and coauthors
2. Backup work to the cloud automatically

Since these two issues plague offline document editors, it's no surprise to see the success and proliferation of online document editors. Other tools like Quip and Pages have more recently entered the field of online collaborative document editors.

# The future of online document editors

For writing simple documents collaboratively, it's hard to beat Google Docs or Microsoft Word 365. For more technical documents -- including and especially scientific research -- Authorea is the only document editor that is combining collaboration, technical writing tools, and a web-first writing paradigm.
Authorea is available for free (www.authorea.com/product) and supports research-writing efforts of nearly one hundred thousand researchers.

# Further reading

- LaTeX is Dead (Long Live LaTeX)
- Caltech Library Demo Interactive