Google Docs Goes Public, Will Appear in Search Results

A post on the Google Docs help forum by Google employee Marie F. has announced that Google will begin to crawl and index all public Google Docs that are externally linked to. At the same time an email has been sent to all Google Apps users that have used Google Docs with specific instructions on how to configure their account settings to avoid any problems with potentially leaked documents by them or third parties using the documents.

This measure will affect only published files (spreadsheets, documents or presentations) that have been linked to from an external website. The Apps' platform was changed so that any search engine (not only Google) would be permitted the access coming from any link outside the platform, from the web.

“In about two weeks  we will be launching a change for published docs,” Marie F., Google employee, said. “The change will allow published docs that are linked to from a public website to be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines.”

While recent surveys from IDC showed that the Microsoft office suite enjoyed a full dominance in offices around the Globe as the main tool to create, store, handle and present documents, there were some encouraging results for Google, which saw a rise in usage for its services.

This Google announcement should send managers in a frenzy to review their accounts’ security settings, since some notable companies (like Twitter) have been recently faced with data leaks while using Google Docs.

At the same time, this move will raise some eyebrows, since people started using Google Docs thanks to its enhanced security features that kept the documents private. To Google's credit, there are several options in the admin back-end to provide the same security as before for documents that need to be kept away from the public's eye.

A copy of the letter sent by Google to its Google Apps users can be found here, courtesy of the Collaboration Matters! Blog.