Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder and principal analyst at Deep Analysis, who has covered the document management space for many years, sees this move as Google just aligning with the market, and by offering it for free, giving customers the opportunity to make this part of their workflow. “It’s been on the cards now for a while that digital signature will become a bundled feature function. Box provides it as standard, now Google. Over time it’s likely Dropbox and Microsoft will do the same or at least provide an alternative to third party options,” he said.