Google & Samsung To Launch Clouds

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

Minimally necessary? What's minimal about being able to use uploaded content to promote their services? I see what you're saying and JoeD's example were very helpful, but the "promoting" part of their agreement makes me weary.

Am I wrong in assuming that Google technically has the right to create advertising using photos and videos uploaded to their cloud service? If so, that's BS and enough to make me shy away.

Not that I would care overly much if they did use any of my photos in their ads, but it's the presumptuousness and underhandedness of it that gets to me.

That use by Google would arguably be: (i) an unreasonable interpretation of the terms of service (going beyond the license you grant); (ii) a violation of Google's own privacy policy; and (iii) a breach of privacy law (PIPEDA in Canada) as it may result in the unauthorized disclosure of personally identifiable info about you. Having already been investigated not that long ago by Canada's privacy commissioner, I suspect Google will be careful to be on its best behaviour with respect to privacy in any event.

The terms of service aren't particularly well drafted here because Google is trying to use those terms of service for a huge variety of its services - some of which more clearly involve promotion using user submitted content than others. These Terms of Service are drafted broadly so they can cover everything from Google Drive to Google Maps.

[BeccaPrice]

I don't want my content scanned for the purpose of sending me targeted ads.

[Rob Lister]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

I don't want my content scanned for the purpose of sending me targeted ads.

really though, that's a big part of the motivation for giving you the free storage. you could always encrypt before saving, but then you'd likely get ads for security software.

[K. Molen]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

...I suspect Google will be careful to be on its best behaviour with respect to privacy in any event.

The terms of service aren't particularly well drafted here because Google is trying to use those terms of service for a huge variety of its services - some of which more clearly involve promotion using user submitted content than others. These Terms of Service are drafted broadly so they can cover everything from Google Drive to Google Maps.

Thanks for the lengthy reply Ninjalawyer, and I guess when it comes down to it my problem is with what I kept in the quote above.

The fact that Google has such poorly drafted terms of service as to even make this discussion possible, and that we basically have to resort to what we suspect Google will do.

[DuckieTigger]

Thank you for the post. Got my Google Drive, Google+ and Skydrive signed up. Apparently if you got a (old) Hotmail account you are automatically setup with a Skydrive. The free upgrade to 25 GB worked for me as well.

Originally Posted by Giggleton

hmmm........... My gmail inbox says 20 percent full. I assume they'll offer more if I ever need it.

20 percent full. That is a lot. I believe the less space you use on gmail, the more space they give you. Not sure if it is because I have my gmail account since before it became public in 2007, but they give me 10 GB. The only way to upgrade you gmail storage at the moment is to upgrade your Drive - you will get 25 GB for gmail then. It is very sad that my free gmail has twice as much storage space as my free google drive. My plan settings look like this:

5 GB of Drive (0% used)
10 GB of Gmail (0% used) (Using 49 MB of your 10240 MB)
1 GB of Picasa (0% used)

Compared to my Skydrive the Google Drive looks small in size for the free version. Except when looking at upgradeablitly. The Skydrive can be upgraded to a maximum of 125 GB (with the +100 gb option for $50.00 per year), whereas Google lets you go all the way to 16TB (at the unaffordable price of $799.99 / month ).

Will I ever use any of the (free) storage? Probably not - the one thing that stops me from even considering it is my slow upload rate. Even the free 25 GB of the Skydrive is not even close to enough for my pictures/movies from my cameras (69 GB when I just looked). So cloud storage is not meant to store your data (music, books, pictures, ...), but to make you pay for extra storage.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

Thanks for the lengthy reply Ninjalawyer, and I guess when it comes down to it my problem is with what I kept in the quote above.

The fact that Google has such poorly drafted terms of service as to even make this discussion possible, and that we basically have to resort to what we suspect Google will do.

It could be that the clause you're worried about is the one that's there to allow promotion of user photos in picasa or when they "feature" a video on youtube or add it to the top lists.

I agree though that it's unfortunate such wording is used when it comes to the cloud storage service. I'd rather google have a base policy that applies to all services then a much shorter "add-on" for each specific service which explicitly adds or removes terms as needed for that service. Then it'd be clearer why terms are present.

Although I use gmail, I'm not sure I'd fancy google indexing my personal data when it comes to cloud storage. I think I'll stick with DropBox for now.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Although I use gmail, I'm not sure I'd fancy google indexing my personal data when it comes to cloud storage. I think I'll stick with DropBox for now.

You should not be using gmail if you are worried about google indexing your personal data. They already do with you emails - and how more personal can it get. I do think it has benefits as you can full-text search your emails - and it uses the same good working search engine as for regular web searches.

As a matter of fact, don't ever use unencrypted email if you a worried about anyone beeing able to read it. SMTP is not meant for privacy - several copies are made on its way to the recipient by all mail-servers it hops through.

[bullet]

Google Drive seems to offer nothing new as of yet. I can now use it on linux, but think I will continue with Dropbox for most things since it syncs on windows, linux, and my iPod Touch. SpiderOak is my preferred method to put sensitive info in the cloud as only I can decrypt the data. Not the case with Dropbox. I have local copies of my Dropbox files on all my computers. Same is true with SpiderOak. Always a good idea to back up on a regular basis to an external hard drive as well.

I am surprised SpiderOak has not been mentioned on this thread as there seem to be many here concerned about privacy. They are among the best at providing data privacy.

[booklover6]

No option to upgrade to 25 GB for me....I have 7 GB. Arghh!

At any rate, trying to see if I can install the android app on my Sony.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

You should not be using gmail if you are worried about google indexing your personal data. They already do with you emails - and how more personal can it get. I do think it has benefits as you can full-text search your emails - and it uses the same good working search engine as for regular web searches.

You can disable indexing of emails for advertising purposes in the app engine settings (Business and Edu accounts)

Maybe I should, but I don't find the contents of my email as personal as my other data like photos, videos and docs. That may be down to the type of email I send/receive which is predominantly mailing list oriented and they're public anyway. Sure I'd rather others don't see it as with all my data, but as far as keywording by google for advertising purposes, I wouldn't be too worried even if I couldn't disable the ad indexing.

As a matter of fact, don't ever use unencrypted email if you a worried about anyone beeing able to read it. SMTP is not meant for privacy - several copies are made on its way to the recipient by all mail-servers it hops through.

I use both IMAP and SMTP over SSL. That's not really to prevent reading by my ISP or at hops along the way, more to prevent casual snoopers at public wifi spots. Not infalible (diginotar), but good enough for me.