Cynicism

This new "feature" scared the crap out of me.

FUN!

Google thinks it's FUN! to have anonymous animals see your private documents. So much FUN! in fact, that they got cute with it and assigned little furry animal names to FREAK YOU THE FUCK OUT.

It's not like I'm working on anything the NSA hasn't already seen -- in fact my work's quite boring and always transparent -- but I have had this experience:

I have this Beverly Hills, CA client. And yes, the stereotype is true: she is going through a majorly nasty divorce. In my contact with her, I needed to share data and used Google Docs. She in turn shared it with someone who made those docs public and, you guessed it, the lawyers found them.


My Beverly Hills divorce client once asked me "how do I enter The Google?" So, it's pretty clear she had no idea what was going on.

Why would Google do this? 

If someone who has a slight grip on how this all works can inadvertently publish self-damning material, why would anyone use it? I ended up having to testify in court on behalf on this client simply because I generated data meant to be shared privately.

Cloud computing is not all that new, but it has major public relation issues.

Cynicism

We have, collectively been told that our information online is secure.

Turns out, not really the case.

The latest headlines of any day will verify that our data is being "lost" or "hacked" or otherwise compromised at an outstandingly alarming rate. And by "alarming rate" I mean: FUCK ME.

Another client of mine has problems with recurring payments simply because so many credit cards were changed after the Target Christmas debacle. I'm pretty sure that the free credit monitoring really didn't assuage any grievances.