If the Product is Free, Are you the Product? Google Drive Special Edition!

Hello! Following up on my earlier posts about how free products like Facebook, Apps, loyalty cards and so on are less about benefiting you and more about generating marketing leads for the companies who supply these products and services to you; Google have launched something else for us all to enjoy.

Thanks to Martin Eriksson (@bfgmartin) for the very pertinent Tweet:


Google Drive was launched to much fanfare this week offering up to 5GB of online storage for free with additional storage available (up to 16TB for a monthly fee). For more on this, check out Wired.

OK, so this is great right? 5GB of space to back up all of my pictures, important files and maybe some of my music? Where do I sign?

Hold on though; before you sign up, think about what you're actually giving to Google. According to their terms and conditions (nicely described here alongside those of competitor services by ZD Net), you could be getting more than you're expecting. In essence, when you submit content, Google have the right to 'use' that content and do pretty much whatever they want with it.

This could mean that your CV is used to advertise recruitment services to you, your music could be used to advertise similar bands to you and so on.

While you retain the IP of your content, Google will use this (as they do with your search results) to advertise things to you and develop new services.

So before you think about signing up, just think about how the files you store could be used by Google and their partners.

I'm certainly not saying "don't do it", but with all of these free services, think about why they're free. What's in it for the supplier?
Location: London Borough of Lambeth, London SW4 0QL, UK

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