Post(s) tagged with "google drive"
I saw a new option pop up in Gmail today, and I have opted into a field trial of a new Gmail search. Now Google will show relavant files in Google Drive and Google Calendar along with emails when searching in Gmail. Also, emails and Google Drive files will show up in Google Searches.
Google Drive is making people think about privacy and ownership all over again: ownership is not onlyship, folks.
John Herrman, You Don’t Own Anything Anymore
In a world where sharing a photo is strictly a matter of getting another copy made and mailing it, or getting it published, copyrights are pretty easy to keep track of and these laws hold up pretty well. Sending a physical photo to your grandmother goes like this: you either put the picture in an envelope and send it, or you get a copy made yourself and send that.
Sending your grandmother an email photo, though, might involve copying your photo five or six times; first to Google’s servers, then to another server, then to an ISP’s CDN, then to AOL’s servers, then to your grandmother’s computer. As far as you’re concerned, this feels exactly like dropping an envelope in the mail. As far as copyright is concerned, it’s a choreographed legal dance.
And so these sites have to get your permission — a license — to copy and distribute the things you post. Just to function as advertised, they need your permission to “use” and to “host,” to “store” and “reproduce.” What they don’t necessarily need is the right to “modify” and “create derivative works,” or to “publicly perform.” That is, unless they need to make money. Which of course they do.
It’s a little easier to understand why Facebook needs to license your content for your profile than why Google needs such a broad license for Google Drive, since Google Drive is supposed to a private locker, not a public page. But it doesn’t really matter that much. In terms of copyright, they’re more similar than they are different.
A terms of service that gives an online company enough leeway to operate will legally give them permission to do a lot of things that most companies know better than to do. Pinterest suddenly selling prints of its users’ pinboards would be a terrible PR move and a dumb business plan. But they could probably get away with it if they wanted to. Facebook Beacon was terrifying and stupid (which is really just a deluded way of saying “five years too soon”), but probably wasn’t illegal.
We are definitely not needed for a world where terrifying and stupid won’t be made illegal, but it would be nice if things that should be illegal were at least difficult. And it’s obvious that copyright laws are not helping, because I don’t want to grant those kind of rights in order to store photos in the cloud.
Amir Efrati reports that Google is close to launching a new product called “Drive”, a would-be Dropbox/Box/iCloud/etc competitor.
Before I left TechCrunch full time, I was hot on the trail of this project. Yes, Google had a Google Drive project that will killed off years ago, but a new one emerged last year and was being extensively used internally once again.
Last I heard, this new Google Drive was said to be much better than the one that was killed off (which was killed off because many thought it “sucked”). It included a web component as well as Dropbox-like software piece that runs on your desktop. Mobile will be key as well, obviously.
The most recent thing I heard supports what Efrati is reporting: that the prices are going to be more competitive than Dropbox.
It’s a commodity, so ultimately it should be built in to the operating system (on the device side) and approaching zero per month (on the server side). What is odd is that Amazon hasn’t launched a competitor.
Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. more.
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