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Google Solves Sharing Bug In Google Docs
RichardDeVries writes "Three weeks ago, I contacted Google about a bug in Google Docs that shared documents without permission. The issue has been resolved and affected documents have had their collaborators removed. The documents' owners have been notified: 'To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually.' See my journal entry for details on my contact with Google. Although I think Google handled the issue admirably, this raises questions (again) about cloud computing, as well as Google's eternal beta-status for a lot of their services."
Prime reason to avoid online office suites and the like. Another good reason is that even these days Internet access is not a given 24x7 every place you want to be.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It seems Google treats their beta products better than most treat their production stuff. Fitting, considering Google has more users of their beta stuff than other companies have paying users.
It raises more immediate questions about SAAS, which Google docs is, not cloud computing. (Google docs is software as a service, not a cloud computing service like Amazon ec2.) Someone else's custom app can have a bug, and leak your data.
So can your provider's closed-source proprietary cloud computing applications, user provisioning, storage, etc.
If, however, the provider uses an open-source hypervisor (like KVM), and open-source provisioning, management tools, and scripts (so the wrong user isn't given access to your storage), cloud computing should be much more secure than a SAAS platform like Google docs.
But yes, it does raise some question about services like ec2, because they're fairly opaque and using proprietary software, how can you possibly prove that their provisioning system is secure (in that YOUR elastic block store can't accidentally be provisioned onto someone else's ec instance)?
One possibility is to use full-drive encryption on all your volumes, and require interaction with custom software on your side to boot your instances.
Although I think Google handled the issue admirably, this raises questions (again) about cloud computing, as well as Google's eternal beta-status for a lot of their services.
Really? I don't use Google Apps but I don't think the act of fixing a bug in any way raises questions about the overall concept any more than Microsoft fixing a bug in Sharepoint would raise questions about closed source Windows services, or fixing a bug in KnowledgeTree would raise questions about similar open source services.
Software application has bug; bug gets fixed. Jesus people, why is this different from any other similar bug being fixed? Oh, it's Google, better get blogging.. Gotta get those ad impressions up.
When there's a bug in my internal doc collab and versioning service, it isn't exposed to the entire world.
I think that's the question raised.
My god, every time someone comes up with a solution in IT, we have this built in expectation that everyone should fall on board. Cloud computing is just the latest. Are we to now upgrade every system to use the "cloud". Are we to do web applications for everything? This isn't an engineering profession, its a fashion one. We're not like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. We're like the guy on America's Next Fashion Designer.
This is my sig.
Well let's say that you're using SharePoint internally, and there's a bug in it. It's not exposed to the entire world, but it IS exposed to the entire organization (which can be just as bad, depending on the bug). More importantly, it's on a hundred thousand different sysadmins to patch said bug on their own MOSS installations, rather than a SAAS company patching it once and having the bug fixed for everyone.
Imagine for a moment if IE was somehow SAAS instead of a desktop app. That would mean that IE6 would NO LONGER EXIST, and that everyone would have an up-to-date version of IE7. And as soon as IE8 comes out of beta, IE7 will also die - instantly, worldwide - and then web developers everywhere will rejoice.
Obviously that simply doesn't work for a web browser (well, it could, but not as it's done now - and it's obviously not the most practical approach), but for all of the problems that SAAS can bring, it also solves a tremendous number of other issues. For something where security is priority number one, it's often not the best choice, but you can't beat it for keeping things up to date. And when you're dealing with closed-source software, that's already beyond your control so you might as well reap the benefits of the instant updates.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
More work I know, but more control if you implement it properly.
I seriously doubt you're going to get your average user to use FTP successfully and I doubt most companies could "implement it properly".
What Google offers instead:
Jane goes to http://docs.mycompany.com, creates the document. Clicks on sharing and shares it with Bob in accounting. Simple and easy.
Is this solution open to bugs in Google Docs? Sure is. But your web/ftp server solution is also open to exploits in both pieces of software AND since it's more complex it's more open to user error.
How does Jane upload it so only Bob and not Bill in accounting can edit it? How does she make it so only Mark, Matt and Jessie in development can view it?
Google Docs makes that trivial to do. Also Bob and Jane can work on the document at the same time and any changes go out instantly to the viewers. Plus the document has versioning built in.