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Google Explains Tuesday's Drive, Docs Bug That Marked Some Files As Violating Terms of Service (9to5google.com)
On Tuesday, Google's cloud-based word processing software was randomly flagging files for supposedly "violating" Google's Terms of Service, resulting in some users not being able to access or share their files. Google today explained the issue and addressed concerns that arose. 9to5Google reports: Several users on Tuesday morning reported no longer being able to open certain files they were working on in Docs, while others were locked out mid-edit. "On Tuesday, October 31, we mistakenly blocked access to some of our users' files, including Google Docs," Google said in a blog post. "This was due to a short-lived bug that incorrectly flagged some files as violating our terms of service (TOS)." Afterwards, Google provided a comment to Gizmodo noting that a code push made earlier that morning was at fault and that full access had been restored to users hours after the bug first arose. Today's clarification goes on to explain how that error on Tuesday caused Drive to "misinterpret" responses from the antivirus system designed to protect against malware, phishing, and spam. As a result, Docs "erroneously mark[ed] some files as TOS violations, thus causing access denials for users of those files."
This is The Cloud. They're not YOUR files, they're OUR files.
How would I flag my data on my own network or computer as violating my Terms of Service? The mind boggles. It definitely is "the cloud". The cloud means you don't control your data.
I get so many companies pitching me cloud this and cloud that. My response has consistently been, I don't trust the cloud for any business critical processes/data. The sales reps will laugh their snipe little laugh and make some pithy comment about 'oh, you must be old school'. Yet we see time after time stories like this, almost always portrayed by the company in question as a 'glitch' or a 'bug' and that it has been addressed and fixed. We are reassured that it will never happen again.... until the next story when it happens again. Here is a good one, not quite a cloud story but close enough to make my point of putting your trust in yourself and not relying on someone else for your stuff to work... so on day a couple weeks ago I try to log into VMware console flash version on Chrome, lo and behold it doesn't work because of something Chrome was doing to block flash. Prior to upgrading to 6.5, I NEVER HAD A PROBLEM logging into VMware using the locally installed app. Now I am held hostage to whatever tiff/security issue between Chrome and Adobe.
I will continue to listen to them call me old school, but when you can't get to your data on the cloud, rest assured I will be laughing. And if you are competitor, I will be laughing on the way to the bank.