In the clouds, but not for long - Google Drive | New Ideas, New Possibilities / LJWorld.com

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Posted by Lawrence Morgan April 25, 2012 at 1:04 a.m.

In the clouds, but not for long - Google Drive

Are you kidding?

No serious business would ever put its files on Google Drive. For those of you who don't know what it is, Google Drive is a place to put your or your firm's files, instead of on a hard drive.

But who would ever do that, especially with Google's new policy, which pertains to all of Google's products.

The San Francisco Chronicle (Business Insider) put it very well:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/04/24/businessinsidera-lot-of-people-are-.DTL

Your files are much more than a filing cabinet. These might consist of daily and yearly working schedules, salaries, health information, tax information, and much, much more. Do you think you would want these files in the "clouds" - which is what Google Drive is called?

Google's new policy - which applies to all of their products

As Google says, "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, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."

What CEO or person even of a small business would want their life's material to be open in this way? And once it is in the "clouds", sooner or later someone else will get hold of it. What about other countries? What if all your material is lost? All of this could happen!

This needs to be thought over very carefully, just like the blog I posted in well commons this week: "New chips can enable smartphones to see under clothing, behind walls":

With new chip, smartphones will be able to see through clothes, walls by Lawrence Morgan WellCommons

If we aren't very careful at this point, we could have technology way ahead of our own privacy concerns.