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So if Microsoft Word uses .docx (formerly .doc), what 'format' is a Google document in?
How does it all work?
Does it just use the HTML standard to make up the document on the page you're working on? (And if so what HTML revision is it using - at least currently?)
Google uses a proprietary format called “kix”, which was introduced with the then new editor a few years ago. The basic structure of a kix file isn't comparable to structured markup (like docx which is basically a zipped collection of XML files holding content and styles) but rather like a data file which starts with the textual content followed by styling information delimited by ASCII control codes.
What you see in your editor is the HTML-rendered content provided by the underlying JavaScript. If you want to work with the document in another application you are able to access the files via the Google Drive API, as John already pointed you to. Although it’s technically possible yet undocumented to export the kix file, this is due to the proprietary format of not so much use.
https://docs.google.com/feeds/download/documents/export/Export?id=[your document's id goes here]&exportFormat=kix
Jul 19, 2014 at 17:42
Google hasn't made it publicly known what format they store Google Docs in at this time. The closest I can find to anything official is this post:
We do not expose our native formats at this time
Google Docs supports importing and exporting in a range of formats (including docx, odt, pdf and html), however they convert going each way to their internal format.
The Google Docs editor does use HTML and is driven by Javascript, you can read about it in this blog post.
The Google Docs format is described here: https://developers.google.com/docs/api/concepts/structure
