A blog post saying "We have 20 petabytes of data in Google Drive" would be promoting the service with your data. Lawyers are always going to argue for the vaguest terms possible in situations like this.
Under Google's TOS they can promote their service by posting my pictures in advertisements on other pages, under the title, "Look what other people are storing on Google Drive."
Sure, and see virtually every user flee the service. It wouldn't be shocking if Congress and the FTC got involved in such a situation, either - they got involved in Google's P3P non-policy, for example.
TOSes are generally overly broad, yes. Virtually every one you've ever agreed to had language that could be interpreted in an absurdly negative manner.
"Sure, and see virtually every user flee the service. It wouldn't be shocking if Congress and the FTC got involved in such a situation, either - they got involved in Google's P3P non-policy, for example."
Well then they shouldn't have a problem amending the TOS, right? If they know what's okay and what's going too far, they must have some idea where the line is.
"TOSes are generally overly broad, yes. Virtually every one you've ever agreed to had language that could be interpreted in an absurdly negative manner."
> Well then they shouldn't have a problem amending the TOS, right? If they know what's okay and what's going too far, they must have some idea where the line is.
Being extremely specific in TOSes tends to lead to lots and lots of revisions as you discover unexpected cases. As a user, I'd prefer a TOS that's a little more broad instead of having to monitor it every five minutes for tweaks.
> Dropbox's TOS seems pretty clear on the matter.
Dropbox's TOS for years was similar to Drive's. I'd expect Google to eventually make the same clarifications in the TOS Dropbox did in 2011.
That said, while we're being paranoid about TOSes, Dropbox's says they can change the terms at any point, and not notify you beyond updating them on their site. They could change the terms to "we will publicly share everything you've ever put on Dropbox with your worst enemies" tomorrow, and the next time you sync you're theoretically subject to the new terms.
