Google Office enterprise security snafu

APRIL 17, 2007: While Google is feted for its pre-announcement of a future planned integration of a “presentations” style feature into its Microsoft Office competitor, Google Apps, enterprise users are worried about corporate security risks stemming from the existing Google Apps Calendar application. 

McKinsey & Company employees do not use Google Apps Calendar on a regular basis, but when they do, they risk putting sensitive corporate information at risk, such as dial-in numbers and passcodes for company meetings, according to IDG News reports. 

Proprietary corporate information of many businesses may be returned through the “Searching for Events” feature of Google Calendar.

Google announced the option last November: 

After Google Calendar launched in April, we saw a surge in the number of public calendars being shared. We thought if we made public events searchable, we could find interesting events with little effort by encouraging people to share interesting events. 

“Interesting” information about private corporate events is being shared, unwittingly or not.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt disclaimed his ambitions for Google Apps to displace nemesis Microsoft's Office Suite by telling the Web 2.0 Expo audience today:

We're not as fully functional as MS Office, we're more in line with how people use the Web than how they use the desktop.

Schmidt may very well need to make Google Apps more in line with how enterprises “use the desktop.”

After all, the free Google Apps for Enterprise trial period ends in a matter of days.

SEE: Google vs. Microsoft Office? Yay! Google Spreadsheets gets charts

ALSO: Google aims to usurp campus email systems and Google undercuts Microsoft Office and Google Apps data risks: Security vs. privacy