Google Drive Incites Paranoia...

Google Drive is undergoing a lot of publicity lately, and it is not due to the amazing innovation in cloud storage, or even because you can get 5gb for free that sync's across all google enabled devices, not in the least bit. It's because the privacy policy is worded in such a way that your documents, content, files, pictures, and any media you that you store in the cloud are now 'owned' by Google.

Though, the policy doesn't explicitly say this, it can be interpreted that way. This article from Cnn.com explains that Google Drive's terms of service states “Google reserves the right 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” anything that you upload to the Google Drive. Furthermore the 'unified privacy policy' of Google explicitly states that it won't use your content for anything other than “provide, maintain, protect and improve [its services], [and] to develop new ones”

This implies that anything you post, as the article explains, such as a picture could end up on a promotional advertisement. Now your face is blasted across the web, providing revenue to google, with no royalties needed, because the legal terms explicitly state that anything you upload to the Google Drive is subject to this type of use, without additional consent from the user.

In addition to this bypass of consent based usage of your files to 'promote' a Google service, people are worried about just how public this material is. If you consider the Megaupload scandal, the article explains that it's possible for your content on the cloud to be subject to a subpoena and taken off the cloud forever.

In retrospect, the new unified privacy policy that Google introduced months ago, explicitly said that any data gathered from your activity cannot be used cross-service, so it begs the question of – Where is the line drawn for 'cross-service'? Google stated that data gathered from e-mail content within G-Mail wouldn't be used for other services, for example advertising on the Search engine, but it can be used for advertisements in the actual E-Mail interface?

At first I thought the new privacy policy implemented by Google was fairly transparent, but in hindsight the transparency was a farce. Vague interpretations of the words Service, Product and Promotion suggests the need for more intense research and awareness among users, rather than taking the policy at face value.