Google Drive Service: Privacy Concerns

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.

Targeting competitors such as the successful Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive service, Google Drive, which is rolling out for all Google account-holders over the next few weeks, allows users to save files from their computers and Android mobile devices wirelessly onto Google’s servers for access from any other computer or Android device.

Google Drive operates on a “freemium” model, offering users 5 gigabytes of free storage and then charging monthly for any additional space needed on top of that at various tiers up to 1 terabyte for $49.99 a month.

“You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond,” wrote Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of Chrome and Google Apps in a blog post trumpeting the new product. Google also released the following video explaining Google Drive.

Yet, in its first two days of its release, Google Drive has had a rough ride.

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. ”