Does Google Docs care about your privacy?
I had a wonderful discussion this morning regarding yesterday’s post. In the post, Microsoft Office vs. Open Office vs. Google Docs, section 11.1 and 11.2 of the Google Docs Terms of Service states:
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
In reading through this as a director responsible for corporate knowledge governance, this sent chills up my spine. I counsel people on security every day, and in reading this I had some questions. Well, so did one of my co-workers. He dug in and found this in Google Docs Help section:
We’ve received questions over time about the meaning of section 11.1 of our Terms of Service. We realize that for those not familiar with legal agreements for services that use the Internet, these terms can look confusing, or even frightening.
The first thing to understand is that this language doesn’t give Google ownership rights to your data. You, and you alone, own your content. Whether you wish to keep your content totally private, or share it with the world, that’s your choice.
However, in order to honor this choice, Google Docs needs permission to display your content as you see fit. This is what we mean by a “license to reproduce.” We need to ensure that when you click the “Publish document” button, or use the “Invite collaborators” option, we have the license to carry out your wishes. It is this agreement, between Google Docs and you, the user, that section 11.1 of our Terms of Service reflects.
Now, I’m no lawyer, but I do have to work with lawyers in writing many of our contracts. In my humble opinion could the lawyers at Google not write some language of this type into the Terms of Service? Why have the end-users have to dig through help files in the first place? This really makes me wonder whether Google really cares about my privacy.
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ChangeForge... a catalyst to affect the paradigm by Ken Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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