First Impression of Google’s GDrive: Scary
Maybe I’m a little paranoid right now because I’m reading James Bamford’s, The Shadow Factory, but this story about an offering Google is bringing to market perhaps later this year is a bit disconcerting.
The concept behind the GDrive is that you would access the internet through some sort of device and what you now know as “your computer” would reside on one of Google’s benevolent servers. The way I think of it is the old dummy terminals in offices where the computer you worked on didn’t store or run anything locally, it gathered all of your data and software from a mainframe or server as you needed it.
Two things jumped to mind when I read about this product. First, why? We’re getting into a time where we do things with technology merely because we can. For instance, cell phones with cameras. I don’t want a camera on my cell phone. I don’t use it, when people send me pictures from their phones, half the time I can’t see what the hell they are unless I get them onto my computer. A camera on my phone might have utility if I were a spy, but I’m not.
Second is trust. Why should I trust Google, a private company with ALL of my private data. I can’t even trust the federal government to respect my private information, why trust Google or any other business? I thought about everything on my home pc and I’m screwed if that data is breached. I take above average security precautions, and most importantly, when I choose to, I can unplug from the Internet and I’m my own safe and secure little standalone just out doing my thing. If all my crap was coralled in the GDrive data barn, that stuff is out there, connected, (or connectable) 24/7.
How long will it take for the hackers of the world to get bored with exploiting Microsoft products and turn their attention to Google, once it has all of our stuff? After all, the end game in this is not to make PCs obsolete, it’s too make Microsoft Windows obsolete. With cloud computing, who needs the obligatory copy of Windows that ships with every machine? If Google were to supplant Microsoft in its core business, the target is now on Google’s back. Last time I looked, Google didn’t have all the smart programmers and mathemeticians on its payroll.
The good thing about product offerings is that we, the public, will get to make the choice. It’ll take some convincing for me to send the contents of my hard drive to Google.
Full Disclosure: I use Google for the ads and analytics for Clips & Comment — I’m totally satisfied with that service — Oh, and my homepage is Google search.
