According to a Google blog post last week, the company will soon enable public search access to 'public' Google Docs. Good idea, right?
Presumably if users mark documents as public, one would guess this move would be a welcome one. There is a snag though as C|Net's Zoë Slocum points out:
While it may well be obvious to most users how publicly available their Google documents are--and many of those published documents may well be intended to be as publicly available as possible--this seems to be another area where Google needs to find the right balance between transparency and data accessibility.
It seems like it would be a better move for Google to provide some clear, straightforward manner of determining whether documents have/will be indexed, or are indexable.
A service aimed at transparency and comprehensive access is only of benefit to your community if everyone clearly understands the ground rules.
Comments