An editorial yesterday in the LA Times called ...
Google ready to unleash spiders and expose your Google Docs
Google just announced in an email to Google App admins that starting “in a few weeks” Google Docs published and shared to users outside of one’s domain and linked to from a public website will be crawled, indexed and appear in Google search results. “This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people,” said Google in its announcement.
While this is great news it’s also sure to scare the many businesses that rely on Google Docs for day-to-day business. A recent IDC survey revealed that 20% of senior managers said that Google Docs was being “widely used” in their workplace.
Thankfully, Google has given Google App admins the ability to regulate sharing to users outside of their domain. However, the sharing options that Google currently offers are not nearly as granular as they need to be. Businesses using Google Apps may likely want tiers of users giving some the ability to share while prohibiting others. In addition, a business might also want to allow sharing with users of specific domains while prohibiting all others.
Sharing options for a PAY Google Apps Account:
Sharing options for a FREE Google Apps Account:
In any event, I’m sure Google will expand these features as time goes on. As a user of both the free and pay versions of Google Apps myself, I can surely speak to the pace at which Google has been updating and adding great features to their Google App offering.
If you are worried about any existing docs you have published please be sure to unpublish them before Google starts crawling and indexing in a couple weeks. For more information, make sure to check out this Google Help Center article on the issue.
Discussion - 18 Comments/Pingbacks RSS feed for comments on this post
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[...] Google’s recent announcement that any Google Docs published and shared outside your domain will be exposed to web crawlers and thus included in Google search results. So an unsuspecting Google Docs user who didn’t know any better might suddenly find their business plan come up in a Google search for their company. [...]
This means your private or confidential files could end up appearing in Google’s search results for all to see. Even if only by accident. It seems inevitible that this will happen — there will surely be cases of this happening.
Google Apps constitute an unnecessary risk for business users
http://www.timacheson.com/Blog/2009/aug/google_apps_are_a_risk_for_business_users
Is Privacy in The Cloud an Illusion?
http://www.elasticvapor.com/2009/09/is-privacy-in-cloud-illusion.html
Geez. So now I have to go through all my docs to find out which ones are semi-public? Pfew, that sucks.
If the docs are linked from websites, then they are already available for anyone to access.
All the spidering will do index them and make them easier to find.
This is just the same as linking PDF documents off websites. They are already indexed …
This will kill Google Docs or relegate it to a niche market. What law firm or company wants a document accidentally indexed and shown to the world? It only has to happen once. Stupid move on Google’s part. Trust me, enterprises are not going to trust their users to not “publicly publish”.
Man… right when I was going to put resources into this platform! Forget that!
Can someone recommend an organic spider insecticide?
Randall,
I am assuming you need an indoor solution…Indoor Pharm – Organic Insecticide. This is a great product. A cat works well!
Regards – Deborah
Good post to show the difference but the headline is a bit mis-leading to those who don’t know the full details.
Hey Mark – Yes, my heading was a bit sensationalized perhaps but have to create those exciting headlines right :)
I hear you though, it’s pretty easy to stop all sharing if your an admin by clicking one button in sharing preferences. However, as I said in the article the sharing options are pretty much all or nothing – that’s not going to work for biz customers using Google Apps.
“Yes, my heading was a bit sensationalized perhaps but have to create those exciting headlines right :)”
Personally for a news story I’d say it’s more important that the headline be accurate. :)
Hello Matt – thanks for your feedback and I definitely here you on that. I’ll make sure keep that balance between attention grabbing but accurate headlines.
Cheers :)
Mike
I thought any doc published to net and linked from some public site will anway be crawled, as that page (google doc) would not be distinguished from any other internet page. whats new here ?
Your title is slightly misleading – I knew the paper press editors did that with other people’s articles, to catch readers’ attention, but don’t bloggers have control over their titles?
If Google is going to spider documents that have already been made public by the author or by someone authorized the author, where is the problem? If business people don’t read carefully the sharing options beforehand, and are faced with unwanted public sharing, it’s their problem, and whether Google scans or not the document thus made public is irrelevant.
As to the need for more granular sharing options:
A) you can achieve that even with the for-free version of Google docs by making copies of a document (it takes one click) and adapting the sharing options for each; B) there are other sharing solutions: no one has to use Google docs.
By all means, we should watch out for the risks entailed by Google’s efficiency in spidering and in classifying data. But let’s not frighten people about non issues.