@MrBlahBlah: Oops previous response was to the wrong poster. I just wanted to add, further to the above, that it would never have happened in the first place, if they truly "got" security....

Mandatory_Field

@keyshey: True, but they were also the company who produced a desktop search engine that didn't respect file security: Showing a document in search results that I don't (and shouldn't) otherwise have access to is a major no-no. They changed it quickly after huge howls of protest and criticism from many of the corporate/governmental/people who care about security entities on the planet.

Mandatory_Field

@marramgrass: the encryption question keeps popping up. i think it's a good one. for me, it's not work related, so privacy is my own, and i don't mind a bot scanning my files. all i want is an active secure sync in the useful neighborhood for size, like 100gb...otherwise, meh.

EMoShunz

For most things, probably. There's a couple of more sensitive, persoal-type files I might not, but...

There are all kinds of online backup solutions out there, and many have a lot going for them. I haven't really used any myself beyond a little experiementation, but I have friends who swear by them.

As far as Google goes... rightly or wrongly, they are a company who have managed to build up a certain degree of trust. Whatever it's based on, I certainly look at them that way. So I may well give it a whirl.

Next question: I wonder what sort of encryption they might offer...

marramgrass

Emoshunz: The way the current laws are written, it's easier to lean on a provider of some sort than an individual. But mainly, law enforcement considers it bad practice to go up to your suspected terrorist/criminal and ask them to provide proof of their guilt. Tends to tip them off, y'know.

As for Google's filestorage service, it's rather unlikely I'd use it. I don't use any online file storage services. I've got my own webserver I maintain, so if I want to make a file available to myself I can do it without obnoxious ads, stupid bandwidth/space limitations and concerns about privacy. And frankly, with things like Dell selling a THREE PACK of 2GB flash drives, I'm at a loss as to why anyone would need online storage just for convenience.

Now, for filesharing/hosting purposes, that's a bit different. If you need to get a large fileset to someone e-mail is often not an option. And you can't do a direct transfer with someone unless you are both online, both using the same protocol and most importantly, both know what the hell you are doing. Hint: This will not generally work with ones 74 year old mother.
So there's tons of sites out there where you can upload a file and then send the URL to whoever you want and they can download it. That's a particular service that is useful, and I might consider using it (be it from Google or others). But even then it'd only be non-sensitive data or highly encrypted.

As for security concerns, it's hardly just about whether you can trust Google itself. Here's a quick list of risk factors:
o Google corp could official use metadata from your files to build statistical models of your interests, behavior, etc.
o Rogue Google employees may abuse their access to root through files for sensitive data to sell/use, or simple titllation (privacy violations).
o Lawsuits may force Google to divulge sensitive data of its customers due to new Federal guidelines about discovery.
o DHS or other 3-letter agencies may demand Google divulge files of a suspected terrorist. And currently, absolutely no evidence is needed for any agency to label an individual a suspect.

Now of course none of this matters much when it comes to something like pictures of your cat, your bad poetry or your 1994 archive of Zork saved games. But the fact is people rarely think about these things. There's an abundance of sensitive data on filesharing networks currently because most filesharing applications by default index everything in the My Documents folder, and most users are ignorant of this. Researchers have uncovered credit card numbers, social security numbers, medical records and even classified military documents about current operations in Iraq.

All that being said, someone else summarized it nicely: People are stupid.

Jeff the Riffer

@WilCon:

Yes sir were with the (agency name here) please release all documentation we are searching for terrorists

EMoShunz

Once again I fight back the progress that is to come. I distrust people enough that I am working on running my own mail server so even e-mail is only open on one end. I have medical documents, legal documents and personal documents there is no way any of those are going to be hosted/stored offsite at a giant Corporation. Yes sir were with the (agency name here) please release all documentation we are searching for terrorists.

WilCon

No i wont trust any with my files, there are too many individuals that may not follow the rules of the company as a whole.

But honestly, do we have a choice?? One just has to bite the bullet and hope for the best, but also expect and prepare for the worst.

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!!! Be it paper or digital, always keep a local physical copy of everything important to you.

btw... quite condescending options for the poll. why bother?!

alukard

@Maatc: True, we trust banks with our money. The thing with banks is you see where your money is and know exactly where it goes. (well, maybe not REALLY because it goes into the account so slowly and flys out of your account so quickly, but I digress...) It is clearly documented where your money comes from when it enters your account and where it goes when it exits your account. No one can use it without your consent. With data, it can be read, copied, scanned, mined and used for any self-serving purpose they wanted. You would have absolutley no idea it had been compromised.

ISU-Cyclone

Question for all you "No, never!" kids:

How much money do you have in your pocket?
Exactly, and where is the rest? In a bank account?

My point being: You already got used to trusting a company full of strangers with your valuables in a different area. Whats the difference with Google?

The old model of stuffing cash in your mattress or dragging around a suitcase full of ones went is going to be out of fashion real quick...

Maatc

Google, at the end of the day, is a company with shareholders. Those shareholders want to see a return on their investment. With that said, Google wants to 'do good' with their programs, etc, but they also want to make money.

What this boils down to is... how are they going to make money from something like a gDisk? They certainly aren't going to store the content for the hell of it, so the question if people will use it really lies in what they are going to do with our data.

And with that said, I probably wouldn't mind using gDisk.

mmr

@omg-ponies: cruel, but oh so true!

dambo29

Well... They have all your email (so they know how much porn you suscribe to) and you must certainly have used it to send files (confidential or not) so what would worry me most is if people (not Goog) do know the rule that if you want something secure (like those incriminating pics) then just dont upload them to anywhere.

Most importantly would be if they are going to buy DivShare now that it's supposedly up for grabs...

whiskey

@Pixelantes Anonymous: you mean because it's digital remote content? for digital on site content (as well as physical) i know it's quite stringent, not sure about what would apply to this though.

EMoShunz

@EMoShunz: "i would love to think that google, being based in the usa, would adhere to usa standards on the subject"

That'd be a bad thing, since there are no such standards. Which is exactly why we are where we are.

Pixelantes Anonymous

I wouldn't mind lending my AES-256 encrypted files to The Goog if they really want them. I'll be sure to keep a copy local for my own use.

Of course that may be a little overkill for my crappy javascript test files.

trojan

@Pixelantes Anonymous: i understand your concern about privacy laws, and i would love to think that google, being based in the usa, would adhere to usa standards on the subject. as for the access, personally for me i would use it more as a live sync if that was possible. i already lost a whack of pictures of my son's birth because i pushed off a media backup too long, in this case it was 2 weeks outside of my plan, and that was it...

EMoShunz

Do no evil Google? [www.globes.co.il]

I wouldn't trust any 3rd party with anything of importance, if I have a choice. I store my emails and my files on my own property and that's the way it's gonna be until privacy regulations in this country change to be more consumer oriented and when companies start paying more attention to data security. Encrypting the files might help a little.

There are other problems with remote storage, most importantly availability. Storing locally allows me to have the files available to me immediately all the time (barring hw failures). Storing them on 3rd party services will not due to Internet connectivity failures (try using RoadRunner in NYC for a while and you know what I mean) and service downtime.

Right now I wouldn't move my important files on ANY service provider, Google Inc. or not.

Pixelantes Anonymous

as scary as it is, it's more scary to lose all my files, and scarier still to think of the cost of getting a proper raid in a fire proof box. then again, if this is only a 5 gb solution, then wtf is the point.

EMoShunz

It was time for Google to do so. It will be useful and I will surely use this service. And I don't care to share with 'em my pr0n content!

Palestina

@ Manditory_Field

wasn't google one of the only search engines that didn't allow the FBI to look at its records in some investigation in the last year or two? I think they cited privacy of their users....sounds like they get privacy to me

MrBlahBlah

@vicsells:

yeah ive been thinking about that.
Ive been using gspace for a while now too.

keyshey

@omg-ponies: Hmmm, I had been thinking "nah, don't really need that", but then YOU come along with a funhandytastic idea and now I realize this is genius. Provided I can stream .avi files from off their server, that is.

banmojo

I will not trust Google with any of my data -- apart from search -- which I can't help because they are too good at that. Let's put it this way, and it may actually fit a proper definition of "irony": I trust Microsoft with the content of my emails, but will never trust Google. That's right, I said in a public forum that I trust Microsoft more than Google with (some of) my private data! Let the flaming begin!

Thing is, Google has shown too often over the last couple of years that it doesn't quite "get" security and privacy. Microsoft has shown over the last couple of years that enough public humiliation can cause _any_ company to greatly improve it's security posture. In the estimation of people who actually know what they're taliking about. Who will also freely state that MS has a long ways to go before it could be considered truly "trustworthy", and I agree. But. Google is the immature, belligerent, arrogant teenager who doesn't quite get it yet. This will (hopefully) improve as the company matures, but for now, all my files are belong to me....

Mandatory_Field

Am I the only person here who already does this?

Anybody ever hear of Gspace for firefox??

vicsells

TrueCrypt container. Or ZIP / RAR with password. Or someone would come up with a better option.

theimmc

I voted "No", but that's a "for now" thing. I expect they will not be using Postini to make the connections secure right out of the gate. Until they do, no. Google Checkout has secure connections, but only for small amounts of data. I expect it's more expensive to do it for MB's and GB's worth of files.

It will also depend on speed. If it takes as long to save as file as it does to attach a document to gmail, or upload it to the webpage manager, forget it.

Brock

@mlmorg: Good point. My upload speed (Time Warner RoadRunner) is pitifully slow. I can't imagine uploading stuff to Google. I suppose I could let the upload run during the day while I am at work, but I think the process would still take days. Just uploading 120 6-megapixel photos to Snapfish takes me about an hour. Ugh.

bandit

@mlmorg: And I think that 640K is more than enough memory for anyone.

Just because your upload speed isn't fast does not mean that the throughput won't increase and in short order.

Moreover, syncing shouldn't be any different from either syncing an iPod or using Time Machine - just transmit the new data.

Finally, no company ever went bankrupt by relying on the foolishness of the American consumer. I had a law school professor who lost his job after the janitor discovered child pornography on the professor's office computer. The professor was a noted scholar in the finer points of copyright law and yet was too dumb to realize that child pornography (a) is illegal - for good reason; (b) is the sort of things that the FBI keep a sharp eye out for; (c) is not something anyone should download from the internet, which is where the FBI like to set up stings; and (d) should not be kept where anyone - especially the janitor - can find it.

People do dumb stuff and will continue to do dumb stuff. You should take some (small) measure of satisfaction that you are ahead of the curve. I qualify it because you are nonetheless surrounded by stupidity.

The morons have us outnumbered.

omg-ponies

Let's list the things of mine they already store:

-documents (docs.google.com)
-pictures (picasaweb)
-mail (gmail)
-videos (youtube, video.google.com)
-voicemail & phone numbers (grandcentral)
-webpage (pages.google.com)
-credit card info and puchase history (checkout.google.com)
-previous chats (gtalk/gmail)
-search history (google search)
-numerous personal notes (notebook.google.com)

Wait, what was the question again?

Cerixus

they're already reading my mail anyways. i'd probably upload most things except for the personal porn

Weihovah

let's be honest, who's going to be uploading a bunch of files onto googles servers anyway...you'd have to have a pretty fast upload speed if you're going to be uploading things like music/movies/etc. It will probably mostly be used for showing/sending other people files or printing off word documents somewhere else (instead of emailing to yourself). I don't see many people uploading anything incriminating onto googles servers, not that i dont trust google anyway.

mlmorg

@utube2007: Ask someone from New Orleans or Malibu.

omg-ponies

They cant be any worse than Microsoft with confidential material. Ill allow google to use me like an ex girlfriend for all I care.

ImTheKing

If I can offload my music to there (even as a bi-weekly backup) absolutely. I'd even make an account for my pr0n collection (separate, natch).

As far as more sensitive data such as my work documents, I already mail it back and forth to myself through GMail. I don't know of any case law at present dealing with the preservation of confidentiality or privilege where third-party applications like GMail or cloud-computing is concerned. It would behoove Google and Microsoft to do some relevant lobbying for legislation preserving such confidentiality.

omg-ponies

Well ... i trust them with my email ... so basically they already have all the real hot and jucy stuff. I mean come on ... who wants too read my master thesis which i would store on this so i have access too it all the time / backup.

Redwraithvienna

Sure, Google can see my family vacation photos and English papers. The only "personal" file that I would keep offline would be my Quicken backup.

Roflcopter_Down

im dont trust any company all companies are out to make money period no other reasons, the reason you go into business is to make money and they will probably be keep some type of tab on the files or something. what is so hard about storing stuff yourself

utube2007