I see that Panic is shutting down their Google Drive integration in their Android app, much like iA did a few weeks ago. This doesn’t affect me directly: even though I am a user of both Android and Google Drive, I regret to say that I don’t use apps from either company on my phone (I do use a few things from both on my Apple devices).

But I do wonder why Google is enacting policies that push developers away from using Drive as general purpose user storage. That’s what Drive was meant to be used for, no? Does Google not think that by adding these security conditions, and not getting back to developers trying to satisfy them, is maybe pushing the scale between security and usefulness a bit too far out of balance? Are they thinking through the implication of any of this at all?

If you were to ask me, my guess would probably be that no, they’re not thinking about it. In fact, I get the sense that they’re making these decisions unconsciously, at least at an organisation level. Probably someone said to the Drive devision that they need to “improve security” and that their performance will be measured against them doing so. So they drafted up these conditions and said “job done” without thinking through how it may affect the actual usefulness of Drive.

And it just reveals to me how large Google is, possibly too large to know why they do anything at all. It’s not like they’re being malicious or anything: they’re a victim of their own success, with way too many product lines making zero dollars that distract them from their raison d’être, which is getting that sweet, sweet ad money. After-all, what does Drive matter to Google in terms of increasing advertising revenue? It’s probably a division making a loss more than anything else.

I suppose, given that I do use both Drive and Android, that I should care more about it. And yeah, I care enough to write about it, but that’s barely above the level of mild curiosity I’m feeling as to why Google is letting this happen. Might be that I’ve just gotten numb to Google not caring about their own products themselves.