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Within hours of
Google launching its new online storage service, the terms and service have
come under heavy fire by the wider community for being able to potentially
stifle innovation and harm the users' Google seeks to serve.
After Dropbox and
Microsoft's SkyDrive -- the two largest online storage services on the Web --
Google was late to the party by a number of years. While Google needed no
advertising to drum up support, what may hold back uptake is that as per the
terms and conditions of using the product, the files you upload to the Google
Drive product undergoes a rights transition.
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
Here's what the terms
say:
Dropbox -- terms can be found here:
"Your Stuff
& Your Privacy: By using our Services you provide us with information,
files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, "your
stuff"). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don't claim any
ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or
intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the
Services, as explained below."
Microsoft's SkyDrive -- 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)."
Related stories
- The Google Drive FAQ
- Google Drive: It's slick, integrated...and not exactly free
- How to get started with Google Drive
- How to copy files to Google Drive faster in Windows 7
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.
The chances are
Google's terms will never be an issue -- and it is likely over-zealous lawyers
making sure Google doesn't somehow get screwed in the long run by a lawsuit --
but it may be enough to push away a great number of entrepreneurs and creative
workers who rely on holding on to the rights to their own work.
The fact is,
according to its terms, Google may own any code or product you ultimately
upload to its new Google Drive service, whether you realise it or not.
It always pays to
read the fine print.
I asked Google to see
if they can shed light on how its terms of service translates in comparison to
other, rival services. Google did not respond at the time of publication.
Updated at 8 p.m. to clarify that the
first sentence of the Google terms states: "You retain ownership of any
intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what
belongs to you stays yours." For more on this topic, See Rafe Needlemen's FAQ.
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