Linux Journal | December 2012 | Issue 224 - ACM Digital Library

INDEPTH4) Get your old files: Drive keeps acopy of every file you edit on it. It alsotracks changes on documents and keepsrevision copies of up to 30 days or thelast 100 revisions.5) Easy sharing to Google+:Backing up photos is one of the mostpopular uses of cloud storage services,and with that in mind, it’s no surpriseto see that Google has made it easy forGoogle+ users to share images from itsnew Google Drive service. Google hasintegrated the two services to allowGoogle Drive users to share photos fromthe cloud service to Google+ from withinthe social network itself.Google’s new cloud storage solutionfeatures 5GB of free space. If you havenever used a cloud-based storage servicelike Google Drive before, take a momentto consider the advantages of keepingyour files on-line. Because files can beaccessed from any computer with anInternet connection, Drive eliminates theneed to e-mail or save a file to a USBdrive. And because Drive allows you toshare files, working with others becomeseasier than ever before.Google Drive and PrivacyGoogle’s biggest problem with theGoogle Drive privacy policy is that thereisn’t actually a specific Google Driveprivacy policy—there’s just Google’s newunified term of service and privacy policy.Google states, “You retain ownershipof any intellectual property rights thatyou hold in that content. In short, whatbelongs to you stays yours.”That means Google can’t use yourcontent for commercial purposeswithout your consent. However, the termof service also states:You give Google (and those wework with) a worldwide license touse, host, store, reproduce, modify,create derivative works (such asthose resulting from translations,adaptations or other changeswe make so that your contentworks better with our Services),communicate, publish, publiclyperform, publicly display anddistribute such content. The rightsyou grant in this license are forthe limited purpose of operating,promoting, and improving ourServices, and to develop new ones.For content that is yours, Google can’tre-use it for its own purposes, but it canuse content you upload in order to serveyou. This can include integrating servicestogether (like reading your scannedpictures in order to OCR them), and itcan include analyzing your files to targetadvertisements to you. Google alreadydoes this in Gmail.Google doesn’t currently serve ads92 / DECEMBER 2012 / WWW.LINUXJOURNAL.COM