Google Tries To Slam Brakes On Privacy Outcry Over ‘Google Drive’
April 26th, 2012Via: Talking Points Memo:
Google on Tuesday unveiled what it affectionately referred to as its “Loch Ness Monster” of products, a long-rumored cloud-based file storage service called simply “Google Drive.”
But now, Google is having trouble keeping its monster under control as a number of Web users have raised privacy issues with the new product.
…
Specifically, Web users and tech writers have expressed misgivings about Google’s terms of service for Google Drive and all of its other Web products, which seem to allow the company to access and manipulate information uploaded by users to the cloud-based hard drive for any purpose Google deems fit.
The key passage of Google’s terms of service that has caused many to think twice about taking Google Drive for a test drive reads as follows:
“When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. ”
Google prefaces this by stating that it won’t assume ownership of your content, “You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours,” and by stating that it will only use the information uploaded to Google Drive and other products “for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.”
anyone who has not read humdog’s 1994 essay Pandora’s Vox should do so right now.
alphavilleherald.com/2004/05/introducing_hum.html