Just a quick note on the Google outage on Thursday – if you are entrusting your important business documents or email to Google you are, frankly, an idiot.

WHAT HAPPENED

Google went down for parts of the world and with it went their mail service and Google docs. If you couldn’t access your business documents or missed important emails because of this you need to wake the hell up right now.

BAD IDEA

Not only do you never, ever, rely on one single company in order for your business to run, you especially don’t want Google (or Yahoo or any other free provider) to be the company that “facilitates” your business. Because Google will use the information you provide, knowingly or not, to adapt its advertising and search algorhithm. That’s what Google does and I’m not bashing it. But you need to be aware of this.

GMAIL

Gmail spies on your email content. You should know this by now. No, it’s not that Google employees are looking at your emails every time, but sophisticated software does gather and process the content of your mail. Did you never notice how creepily fitting some of those ads are you’re seeing over your inbox?

This data has to go somewhere. What’s to say a rogue Google employee or contractor won’t access your stuff one day?

GOOGLE DOCS

Same for Google docs – that stuff’s online. If it’s online it’s hackable, and accessible to third parties, particularly whoever provides the service. In this case Google.

For years I’ve been telling clients: don’t use Gmail as your sole business email. It looks unprofessional and it’s not secure. Same for Google docs. Anything Google or any other free provider offers should be used with great caution. And always have a backup.

I don’t feel sorry for anyone who was negatively affected by Google’s SNAFU.

Google is not your friend. It’s a business.