Working my way through unit 4: Free tools
Loved the look inside the Google data centres,with its vast colour coded water cooling systems. Really liked the infographic about how the companies make money from their free tools.
As I use gmail I decided to explore some of the Google services. Google offered me to the service to search for me on the web, and I found accounts I knew about and a couple that I had forgotten that I had joined. I also found a British me cycling to raise money for charity back in 2009 and a link to phone number in Georgia USA (neither one the real me!) I was surprised when I followed another link to find not information about me but a photo of my mother in law as she is a friend on Facebook. When we enter information and make connections we don't really know where they will end up and who may search and find out information.
Reading the privacy statements for Google:
I didn't read the terms of use and privacy conditions when I first joined Gmail many years ago but for this assignment I plunged into the terms and conditions. My eyes were beginning to glaze over with all the possibilities for privacy and who is linked through the Google circles but I did find that the terms of service were clearly written. However the following was a bit disconcerting (http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/):
Your Content in our ServicesSome of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.
So Google can modify or publicly perform my thoughts to promote their service?
As a result of reading the terms decided that I had been lazy with my passwords so I decided to create a stronger password for Google, but of course that automatically means that my YouTube log in and other linked accounts to Google have changed as well. Perhaps this a big drawback with the linked Google tools.
The Google dashboard revealed a surprising amount about me and the history of my searches done on my iPad.
Exporting my data:
My back up seems to be in the Google cloud and I can download individual files from the Google Drive. I couldn't see information about the back up of data, but there were frequent references for the need to have a verification back up.
Closing my account:
It seems to be quite easy to delete and to reactivate with in a set period of time. It is possible to set up an inactive alert so that you or your trustees will be alerted if the account is inactive for a designated period of time.
Would I recommend this tool?
I would recommend Google it is very user friendly and there is enough information in the legal speak pages to inform people.
I think it would be a great activity to do with my secondary school students. Have them log into their own accounts and see how much information is out there on the web without them even trying to publish or push their profile out.
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