"Google does not limit their liability in regards to its confidentiality obligations and includes Customer Data in definition of Confidential Information. Google is responsible for any actions of its employees and agents."
"Microsoft caps its liability for "free" services at $5K including any damages related to Institution Data short of Gross Negligence or Willful Misconduct."
says this: "YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT GOOGLE AND PARTNERS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ..."
Yes, I think you're looking at the wrong terms of service; you're looking at their ordinary end user terms of service, not their educational terms of service. The educational terms of service, http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/education_terms.htm... say:
> 12.2 Limitation on Amount of Liability. NEITHER PARTY MAY BE HELD LIABLE UNDER THIS AGREEMENT FOR MORE THAN THE AMOUNT PAID BY CUSTOMER TO GOOGLE DURING THE TWELVE MONTHS PRIOR TO THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY.
> 12.3 Exceptions to Limitations. These limitations of liability apply to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, but do not apply to breaches of confidentiality obligations, violations of a party’s Intellectual Property Rights by the other party, or indemnification obligations.
So, they put a cap on liability of how much they've been paid in the past year (which in most cases for their educational program is nothing), but do not limit liability for breaches of confidentiality obligations.
I wonder if UC Berkeley is confusing "confidential obligations" with "confidential data".
It doesn't seem like google is saying, "if we lose an email, and it costs you a million dollars, we're liable for it".
From this section:
"Confidential Information.
5.1 Obligations. Each party will: (a) protect the other party’s Confidential Information with the same standard of care it uses to protect its own Confidential Information; and (b) not disclose the Confidential Information, except to Affiliates, employees and agents who need to know it and who have agreed in writing to keep it confidential. Each party (and any Affiliates, employees and agents to whom it has disclosed Confidential Information) may use Confidential Information only to exercise rights and fulfill its obligations under this Agreement, while using reasonable care to protect it. Each party is responsible for any actions of its Affiliates, employees and agents in violation of this Section.
5.2 Exceptions. Confidential Information does not include information that: (a) the recipient of the Confidential Information already knew; (b) becomes public through no fault of the recipient; (c) was independently developed by the recipient; or (d) was rightfully given to the recipient by another party. "
It sounds like what Google is really saying is, "If we make some kind of secret deal with your organization, you better protect that secrecy as well as you protect all of your confidential information, or there is no limit to how much we can sue you for the breach."
But see the definitions: "Confidential Information" means information disclosed by a party to the other party under this Agreement that is marked as confidential or would normally be considered confidential under the circumstances. Customer Data is Customer's Confidential Information.
Does anyone know what this switch implies for Patriot Act information requests? I had heard that the UC puts up some resistance to the FBI when asked for user data, and that Google does less so.
It is talking about "confidentiality obligations", not "confidential obligations." That is, obligations to keep information confidential, not obligations that are themselves confidential.
And below, they define confidential information clearly:
'"Confidential Information" means information disclosed by a party to the other party under this Agreement that is marked as confidential or would normally be considered confidential under the circumstances. Customer Data is Customer's Confidential Information.'
They explicitly state that "Customer Data is Customer's Confidential Information." They are indeed saying that if they release the contents of an email, and it costs you a million dollars, then they are liable for that.
IAAL, and I deal with this stuff all day every day. The language you quote above is a very standard mutual confidentiality provision.
You left out the definition of "Confidential Information", but I'll bet you it's along the lines of "stuff one party gives to another that by its nature and under the circumstances would reasonably be considered to be confidential in nature".
Also, unlimited liability doesn't mean an automatic jackpot for the side whose secrets were leaked. It just means that the contract doesn't impose a ceiling on how much can theoretically be recovered in a worst-case scenario.
So, what's this really all about? Theoretically speaking, the fairest contract in the universe would not include any limits on liability at all. In other words, each party would and should be fully responsible for all of the harm that it causes.
However...by convention, it's very common for Party A to shift at least some of the risk of its screw-ups onto Party B. (If I had a dime for every sales person who told me "mistakes happen", I'd have thousands of dimes.)
One popular way to shift risk is to say "I'll be responsible for harm that I cause you, but only up to $X MM".
Another popular way to shift risk is to say "I'll be responsible for harm that I cause you, but only to the extent that I was the direct, proximate cause of it". (This rather vague standard gives the lawyers plenty to fight about in court.)
Anyway, imagine you gave me an important secret on a piece of paper to hold in safe keeping for you, and you asked me not to share it with anyone. Now, imagine that I lose the paper, and someone finds it, and your secret gets out.
What are your damages in that case? Well, we know you lost a piece of paper, so it's easy to measure your "direct" loss. Will you be happy if I just give you the price of a loose sheet of paper? No! You've just been dragged through the mud because I leaked your humiliating secret to the world. You're going to want compensation for losses that can't be so directly connected to my screw-up. You're going to want to hold me accountable for harm to your reputation, lost opportunities, etc. Maybe the secret on your piece of paper was the key to your company's whole competitive advantage! Now you're going to want to hold me responsible for ruining your entire business...just because I lost a piece of paper.
But you know what? You're not wrong. It's important to make both parties liable for losses that are both directly and indirectly caused by a breach of confidentiality, because the losses associated with leaked secrets can be quite severe indeed.
* The usual disclaimers apply. IAAL, but I'm not your lawyer. Don't treat this verbose, but fatally incomplete, post on HN as legal advice. ;)
It strikes me as accurate. Google apps is better for mail, and Microsoft is the cats ass when it comes to calendaring. If you are the secretary who must schedule 20 execs for a meeting the first Wednesday of every month, then there is nothing better than Outlook/Exchange.
Thank god I no longer live in a world where I am tied to my calendar. As google gets bigger, google calendar will get better, and the worse it will be a place to work. Understanding the need for a great calendaring app requires a company that has lost its soul.
Well, I mean I know they are Google and all- but I can't imagine Gmail and Gcal supporting a corporate user very effectively. I use it for my personal stuff, but I am extremely appreciative of Exchange at work.
Calendar seems to have a similar featureset to that of Outlook. You can put appointments on other people's calendars and you can schedule rooms, anyway. And, at Google, the conference rooms have motion sensors that allow the room reservation system to "garbage collect" unused rooms. (You also get an LED indication of whether or not you'll be running into someone else's time if your meeting runs late. Gotta love the hardware support!)
I've worked at a company that had these deployed. They were actually quite nice. In the rare event they failed, it was quickly resolved as everyone could see the LED that would turn to green/red/yellow that people nicknamed "the worm".
http://www.steelcase.com/en/products/category/integrated/col...
Directory searching, hotkeys for everything, Calendar is more powerful AND easier to use. Searching email is faster, managing hundreds of messages easier, and the interface, snappier.
Offline is a smoother experience requiring no effort. Reminders for the Calendar actually manage to get my attention.
Rules are easier to manage, and if memory serves much more flexible.
I am not criticizing Gmail et al mind you; as I mentioned, I use them all the time. They just are more useful for personal, low-volume stuff.
I enjoy Calendar, and my company uses their own but provides a link so that I can have it automatically imported to my Google Calendar. So my work, family, and personal calendar are all on one happy color coded page, and on my phone a simple widget.
To add another thought- it is not surprising, but it also is. I've gotten the impression Google is pretty good about avoiding NIH syndrome, and use the best tool for the job. Sometimes there is no such tool and they build one, or sometimes the best tool isn't good enough so they extend it, but...
> It strikes me as accurate. Google apps is better for mail, and Microsoft is the cats ass when it comes to calendaring. If you are the secretary who must schedule 20 execs for a meeting the first Wednesday of every month, then there is nothing better than Outlook/Exchange.
Really? A bunch of things about Outlook calendering drives me up the wall. I can't find a way to tell it that I've attended an event just dismissing the late notice. Also just the other day it prompted me with a late notice about a cancelled weekly meeting.
Another fun fact is that when you forward someone a meeting and add a snide comment to it, your snide comment gets sent to the organizer. I always wondered why people stopped liking me suddenly, then I realized that my private commentary about stupid meetings wasn't actually private.
The "analysis" seems to be strongly favoring Google products in the Email/Calendar Cloud/Local Solution section.
- Integration with Collaboration Tools: SharePoint Online is all about collaboration. As they want to continue using Microsoft Office, there is no better way (at the moment) than SharePoint. Google's cloud connect Add-In for Office is the first try at this, but it is still rather ugly (who wants a large bar on all documents, what about using the ribbon?) They also misspelled Lync, which is the Google Talk of Microsoft, goes much further than GTalk and integrates in ALL Office applications. You can chat with the people currently editing the same document you are editing on your local computer.
- Ease of Tools Development: "Google has a more robust and documented API" - NO, simply not true. "aligned with the skillsets on campus" is a valid argument. But saying it is easier to develop for Google products than for the MS stack is a stretch.
- User Familiarity: They say, that they use MS Office. Familiarity therefore is high with Office 365.
Glad to see Cal quitting MSFT. Perhaps they're looking for a donation from Schmidt (alum). Gates hasn't given to Berkeley afaik while he has to Stanford. Yes I acknowledge this is a cynical perspective but perhaps makes sense considering public universities are so strapped for cash while privates keep on getting donations.
On the other hand, they just signed a contract providing Microsoft licenses to all the students, which is unfortunate. Earlier they did the same with Adobe. This is their solution to lowering costs--lets provide Microsoft and Adobe products to everybody! I, naturally, disapprove, but that has never mattered...
I don't think most of the people taking, say, a class on Nabokov will complain much about needing Microsoft Word. In fact, I suspect the only inconvenienced person will be the lone EECS major using Linux (me :)).
As long as professors want hard copies, it won't be an issue. (Using MLA format with LaTeX is really, really easy.) However, some do expect digital copies for whatever reason. I've seen them ask for docs uploaded to the internal class website system, which is itself pretty horrible. I just hope I don't have to deal with it--even opening LibreOffice is more annoying than one could hope.
I've always found these large organizational analyses to look completely sound and well-reasoned on paper, yet never really align with reality when deployments start going up.
IIRC, the City of Los Angeles did a similar evaluation, yet they shuttled a migration to Google due to security concerns.
In less-public implementations, I've seen planned migrations from MS to Google Apps dropped after pilot tests, mostly due to user complaints about usability.
I don't fault MS or Google in any of these areas, but rather those conducting the analysis.
> IIRC, the City of Los Angeles did a similar evaluation, yet they shuttled a migration to Google due to security concerns.
Actually most of the city is using Google Apps and the contract has been renewed. The LAPD decided it wanted additional security and hasn't migrated yet.
The amendment will remove the LAPD, portions of the city attorney's office, the Los Angeles Fire Department, Department of General Services, and Department of Transportation from the contract
Only a little more than half of the expected number of users have been migrated.
Still a nice win for Google, but also a cautionary tale.
So what are the excluded departments using? Hosted Exchange? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that whatever solution they're using isn't any more secure. Even if you host your own mail servers inside Fort Knox, and hire and vet everyone who goes near those servers, you still have all the same trustworthiness problems.
On the other hand, I'm probably missing something there, since Google somehow failed to convince them to stay on board.
Seems that they found Google to be a better end-user experience for email and for casual calendar users, but Microsoft won out on power calendar users and in terms of legal/compliance issues. Doesn't seem clear to me why they chose Google here -- costs?
I am surprised they haven't evaluated the office apps that are associated with the suits. As a long time Google Docs user, I was stunned by how superior the online version of Excel is to Google's offering.
They're not migrating the other apps. From the FAQ [1] - Q: Is Microsoft Office being replaced by Google Docs? A: No, Microsoft Office will continue to be a desktop standard at the University. ...
It's really unfortunate that they insist on using Microsoft office. Happily the rational departments--the ones I usually deal with :)--don't expect office docs, but I wouldn't put it past my future literature (or whatever) professors to expect them. And that would suck.
For one, as I mentioned elsewhere, they have a site-wide license for actual Microsoft Office products (unfortunately). Here they were probably primarily looking to replace Calmail which is not brilliant.
I am Google Apps addict but they still don't have a web-based Excel-killer. I think that when bankers and corporates start using Google apps to build their financial models then Microsoft should worry.
Even for startup business modelling I'd rather use a fifteen year old version of Lotus 1-2-3 than Google Apps. Their spreadsheet is definitely a second-tier product.
This is not the intended use case for Excel. Rather, it's a product of 10 years of bad decisions leading to more bad decisions.
(Someone I work with created a "market data bus" using Excel. It had the side effect of preventing Outlook from receiving email while it was running, so you had to have two machines if you wanted to read email AND get market data via this method. Now that's shoddy software engineering.)
I think they got it wrong, Google offerings SUCK (REALLY BAD) when it comes to collaboration. In a large organization like UCB, I wonder why they don't use any collab tools?
"Both Google/Microsoft offerings were NOT reviewed"
"These applications were not extensively reviewed during this process, but are already used in other departments for teaching and learning purposes."
"Office 365 comes with its Office online apps and the option of deploying SharePoint Online and Lync* (which were not reviewed)."
At least they aren't doing what Indiana University did - use both and let the students decide which system they want to use. Now they can choose between Imail (Microsoft) or Umail (Gmail). But on the administration side, IU is still pretty much a Microsoft shop though with the faculty having an Exchange setup.
Limitation of Liability:
"Google does not limit their liability in regards to its confidentiality obligations and includes Customer Data in definition of Confidential Information. Google is responsible for any actions of its employees and agents."
"Microsoft caps its liability for "free" services at $5K including any damages related to Institution Data short of Gross Negligence or Willful Misconduct."
Google is far superior.
But http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/user_terms.html
says this: "YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT GOOGLE AND PARTNERS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ..."
Am I looking at the wrong TOS?