Your Google docs: Soon in search results?

Your Google docs: Soon in search results? | Webware - CNET.

Web 2.0 is great for interactive discovery of information. I have been reticent, however, to advise lawyers to put mission critical or client confidential information in the websphere, no matter the protestations of vendors about security. Users are not always going to make fine distinctions between "Publish to Web" and other web terminology if they are creating documents and sharing them online. It is risky enough to send documents attached to emails. Mis-directed emails have gotten more than one lawyer or firm in trouble. If Google starts including web documents created by users in searches, you risk the document being sent anywhere. Do lawyers really want to take that risk? So, if you are using Google docs to create and disseminate confidential documents, be careful that you don't hit that "publish as web page" button. Better yet, keep the document on your hard drive, and use email or paper mail to disseminate. Sometimes, too much technology can be a dangerous thing.

Comments

[James]

In the Premier edition an admin can change the settings so docs can not be shared outside the domain or published. If sharing is allowed the user will be warned about the danger. Sure a user could ignore all the warnings but it is still more than email gives you which is none. If the policy is to not email attachments but rather use the Docs sharing feature and sharing is only allowed in domain, you could argue that Docs is safer than other methods.