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Users of Google Docs and Spreadsheets would have a second thought on to what extent they can use it as these documents are soon going to be publicly available. Google has officially announced that it would be making all Google Docs and Spreadsheets available for public use in about two weeks time. Google in their blog have made this announcement. They have said that, The change will allow published docs that are linked to from a public Web site to be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines…This is a very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites will reach a much wider audience of people.” However, it is not sure how comfortable the users would be to have public access to their personal documents and spreadsheets. But there is nothing to worry as such as the users would be able to opt for such public visibility.
The users would have full control over selecting the option to allow or decline public access to their personal documents. Only those docs and spreadsheets that are explicitly published using ‘Publish as Web page’ or ‘Publish/embed’ option and those that are linked to a publicly crawled web page would be available in the search results. Users who tag their Google Docs and Spreadsheets with “allow anyone with the link to view” will not be crawled by the search engines. They can even un-publish the documents they do not want others to view. These points have as well been mentioned in their official blog so users can decide on what they want to do.
Some users have expressed their concern about the change in which they wish to know if these tags included are the only way to know whether their documents would be publicly available. In addition, they have specified that how exactly they would know on which publicly crawled websites are linked to their documents and spreadsheets. They have said that it would be better if there would some other better, sure and simple way of understanding the phenomenon.
Many online resources speaking about the change say that Google Apps master view does not provide information on which docs would publicly be published and which would not be. However, this should not be a problem as the users themselves can select the option. Yes, it would still be a concern for the users as they would not cent percent be sure if their documents would be available publicly available even after been opted not to be published. It is not sure on what impact it would have on new subscriptions of Google Docs and Spreadsheets.