You’re editing a sentence. Your colleague in Tokyo deletes the same word. Another teammate in London adds a paragraph. All within 50 milliseconds. When you press save, what text should survive? This isn’t a hypothetical—it happens millions of times daily in Google Docs, Figma, and Notion. The magic isn’t preventing conflicts; it’s making them invisible.

Two competing philosophies dominate this space: Operational Transformation (OT) and Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs). Google Docs uses OT. Figma switched from OT to CRDTs. Both solve the same problem differently, and understanding why reveals fundamental trade-offs in distributed systems that apply far beyond text editors.