Google Drive goes live

[bigboss]

Starts with 5GB of free storage space:

http://www.stuff.tv/news/web/news-nugget/google-drive-goes-live

 

[daveh75]

Sort of live.

A visit to the Google Drive website tells me 'Your Google Drive isn't ready yet' nor is it available on Play on any of our devices.

However visiting the Play store on the PC it shows up and lets me install it to the devices.

Its now syncing and has automatically imported stuff from Google Documents, Picasa etc.

 

[fr0g]

All installed here.

I now have 5GB on Google Drive, 25 GB on Microsoft Skydrive, , 31 GB on DropBox, 5GB on Sugarsync and 200GB (paid) on Google Docs/Picasa Web albums (which I guess will be part of drive).

All good.

 

[bigboss]

I now have 5GB on Google Drive, 25 GB on Microsoft Skydrive, , 31 GB on DropBox, 5GB on Sugarsync and 200GB (paid) on Google Docs/Picasa Web albums (which I guess will be part of drive).

:O

 

[bigboss]

Here's the caveat:

Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive allow you to retain your copyright and IP rights to the work you upload to the service, but Google Drive takes everything you own.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57420551-93/who-owns-your-files-on-google-drive/

Here's what the terms say:

Dropbox -- terms can be found here:

"5. Your Content: Except for material that we license to you, we don't claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don't control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service."

Google Drive -- terms can be found here:

"Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)."

The last sentence makes all the difference. While these rights are limited to essentially making Google Drive better and to develop new services run by Google, the scope is not defined and could extend far further than one would expect.

Simply put: there's no definitive boundary that keeps Google from using what it likes from what you upload to its service.

 

[fr0g]

Little unfair on Google by missing the preceding sentence from the quote...

"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."