
			Google plans to make PCs history  - nickb
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/25/google-drive-gdrive-internet
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lunchbox
The GDrive will make PCs history the same way Google Docs made Microsoft
Office history.

...catch my drift?

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wmf
Without a PC, how will you access the GDrive? Through a Google neural implant?

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peterd
I'm not sure how this will "make PCs history", unless Google plans to outlaw
having your data anywhere else but on their servers. If you don't like the
privacy implications of giving Google your data, then don't use the service.
Personally, I don't plan to--I want my data on my own machines, and nowhere
else.

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enomar
I'd bet Google hates articles like this.

If Google does have a GDrive project, I'd bet they don't consider it a means
to "make PCs history". I'd bet they probably just want to offer a service that
users want to use; therefore increasing use of their other products and
selling more ads.

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andreyf
_Does it matter that Google can be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all
your data to the American government?_

I am not a lawyer, but this seems out of sync - I imagine the process for
getting a warrant and a subpoena are different (the latter being easier).
Whatever the legal reasoning was for protecting the letters I store in my home
should also apply to my e-mails in Google's database, no?

Anyone more knowledgeable care to elucidate?

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nickb
I have no idea how many subpoenas Google gets per day but my guess is that
they get a fair bit of them. I also don't know how they respond to them but
I'd wager that they comply with vast majority of them. What I'd like to know
is how Google deals with out-of-US subpoenas. Do they comply?

I think you could argue that, due to Google File System's (GFS) distributed
nature, you could request a subpoena from a local judge in any country in
which Google has a data center because Google would have to prove that a chunk
of data belonging to someone is not hosted in that country. That's very hard
ot disprove since I doubt that Google keeps historical track of their chunks.
The way GFS works, a master keeps tracks of chunks but it doesn't keep a
history of where each chunk was. So a clever lawyer could try to subpoena
anyone's account given that Google has a data center in their country.

For example, Google has a data center in UK. Could US person's account, be
subjected to a UK issued subpoena if a lawyer uses the logic I described
above? Maybe.. there's no way to prove that a chunk of your data is not hosted
in UK.

Distributed systems ("cloud") are a privacy nightmare waiting to happen, and I
think that EU privacy commission will tackle this issue at some point. "Cloud"
computing seems to be illegal (to a certain degree, in strong-privacy
countries like Germany).

More info here:
[http://www.jroller.com/MasterMark/entry/google_teh_evil_clou...](http://www.jroller.com/MasterMark/entry/google_teh_evil_cloud_economics)

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andreyf
_Distributed systems ("cloud") are a privacy nightmare waiting to happen..._

A lot of technological advances are "nightmares waiting to happen" before the
proper legal systems are in place. This is a problem with privacy laws, not
with Google's technology.

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nickb
"... before the proper legal systems are in place."

And how long do you think it will take for all the countries in the world to
adopt these laws?

For now, I'd consider any tech that can run into issues like I described, a
problem, and not the laws. Laws should be considered immovable objects since
they're open to interpretation and rely on centuries of case law. Laws have
already all but killed P2P... and nothing has changed in the past 8 years that
will change that and I'd bet against anything changing them in the next decade
as well.

~~~
TooMuchNick
Yeah, I heard all about how laws killed P2P on the latest episode of Law &
Order I torrented.

~~~
nickb
What's the most successful (i.e. is making money) P2P company?

~~~
andreyf
Skype?

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pclark
"The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer, which
relies on a powerful hard drive"

