Open as a Google document

I happened to use Gmail's "Open as a Google document" in Gmail the other day to open a form that I had received in Microsoft document format. When I did this I received an email from The Google Docs Team informing about my use of the service. One thing they said caught my eye, namely:

"Know that your documents are safe. Since your content is stored on Google's secure servers, even if something happens to your hard drive, your documents are protected."

I understand that they are probably just talking about physical safety but it's important to know that the safety of your content, any content, that you run through Google's services is not guaranteed. Within their terms of service you will find items that should give pause, such as this one:

By submitting, posting or displaying the Content you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service..."

They do not make this clear when you open a link with Google Docs. They also don't make it clear that you are going to open the document on their server before you do this. On first glance you would think that they'd store the document in a temporary location and use a program to display it, much like pdf's are handled with most browsers. It's only after you open it and use the service are you notified that you've saved a document on their servers and they have held an editable version with google docs for your convenience. Not to worry, you can know that your document is safe with Google...