Google Drive owns everything you upload? Privacy policy concerns remain
Many people wonder if Google owns everything you upload on Google Drive? Meanwhile privacy policy concerns remain unanswered
Google Drive is finally officially launched. Many Google users have so far received email notifications to get into the much-awaited cloud storage service. But soon after its official launch, the blogosphere and Twitter have erupted with concerns over Google’s intellectual property rights on the content stored in Google Drive. Many analysts are anxious that Google will have intellectual rights over the documents, videos, images and other files stored on its servers. Indeed, a part of Google’s controversial new privacy policy is the reason for the current hubbub over the Intellectual rights.
“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,” says the new and unified privacy policy of Google, which came to effect on March 1, 2012.
Of course, the privacy policy doesn’t only cover GDrive, but all other Google services. It was an attempt from Google to bring together all its online services under a single policy. The new controversy over intellectual rights of Google Drive content has two dimensions. Referring to the above mentioned part of Google’s policy, many claim that users won’t have rights over the content stored in Google’s cloud storage.
At the same time, another part of the privacy policy says otherwise, “Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.” It simply means that users can retain their right to the content stored in GDrive. They cannot only access the content from anywhere, share with friends and keep them secure on Google Drive, but also keep the intellectual rights.
Google’s leading rivals in cloud storage like Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Dropbox leave the intellectual rights to the owners of the content. Whatever content users store and share on these services, its intellectual right will go the owners, policies of those companies explicitly state. According to Fox News, Dropbox simply mentions that the “information, files, and folders that you submit” are collectively the stuffs of users and “you retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it.”
When it comes to SkyDrive also, the same affirmation can be seen in its policy. “We don’t claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content.” Nevertheless, in case of Google Drive, we are still confused of the situation. It is high time that Google should soon give a clear explanation for the fuss. Thus users can store their data in GDrive with no fear of losing their rights.
Google Drive release, major features
Google has just introduced its Drive cloud storage facility. Launching the much-touted feature, Google says that is a place where users can “create, share, collaborate and keep” all their content. Google has abruptly mentioned a few of Google Drive’s amazing applications in its intro to the service. It can be a great platform if you work with a friend, do a joint research work, plan a wedding with fiancé or track budget with roommate and so on.
In all these situations, the full-fledged cloud storage service will come in help of you, the Mountain View online giant claims. The service supports all types of files including videos, images, Google Docs, PDFs and much more. Google has also described three major functions of the service.
Create and collaborate: Google Docs is built into Google Drive. Thus, users can create documents, spreadsheets and other items and collaborate them with friends or coworkers easily.
Store everything safely and access it anywhere: Well, it is the second major feature of Google Drive that you can store anything on it for future use. It is basically a cloud based storage service, which you can access on any net-connected computing device from across the world.
Search everything: You can search any document and file stored in Google Drive using keywords. Thanks to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, content even in scanned documents can be found in searching.
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