My employer (German) just banned all Google products (except search) for work-related things, due to privacy issues. Reading Google's latest terms-and-conditions, this move is somewhat understandable, given the strong privacy laws that German companies and institutions have to follow.
On the other hand, I guess that scanning a large amount of emails is the precise thing that allows them to offer robust email-to-event conversion. But I wish that this sort of thing would work locally (on the cellphone or computer in question), not on a remote server somewhere.
It will be interesting to see if in years to come we'll look at Germany's policy as overly cautious and a net loss or extraordinarily prescient.
I'm genuinely on the fence on this one. I'm rather cavalier on privacy issues (at least where they affect my own person) and quite happy with the goodies I receive in return. However I sometimes wonder how I'll feel with the benefit of hindsight.
I meet quite a few people talking about moving their tech infrastructure away from US controlled cloud services. I may live in a bubble, but it would be interesting to see some data on intentions in EU companies about this.
Not just in the EU - I hear this a lot in Canada too. My use of their services was even considered a red flag on a recent consulting gig.
Another odd case I ran into is parents trying to prevent their children getting into the Google ecosystem until they're mid-teen level. This is manifesting in resistance to their education stuff being adopted by schools.
I used to think that it was important to protect data from being stored in the US .... until the NSA leaks and the realisation that Canada is a Five Eyes member rendered it effectively moot. Now I'm simply more worried about theft or spying by non-government third-parties -- the security in place rather than the laws that apply to the service provider. But that's just me.
On the other hand, I guess that scanning a large amount of emails is the precise thing that allows them to offer robust email-to-event conversion. But I wish that this sort of thing would work locally (on the cellphone or computer in question), not on a remote server somewhere.