Google will allow browsers to crawl and index documents, spreadsheets and presentations that users of Google Apps have published to the web.

“In about two weeks we will be launching a change for published docs. The change will allow published docs that are linked to/from a public website to be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in search results you see on Google.com and other search engines,” the company notes on a help centre post.

“Please note that this only applies to docs which you explicitly publish using the ‘Publish as web page’ or ‘Publish/embed’ option, and which are linked to from a publicly crawled web page. This doesn’t apply if it’s only set to ‘Allow anyone with the link to view (no sign-in required)’. If you don’t want your published docs to be crawled, then you can un-publish.”

According to Google, the move benefits users by opening their work to a much-wider audience, however, it’s also provoked privacy concerns among users.

“In two weeks? That seems incredibly short notice for such a big change,” notes one poster on the Help Centre. “Users who have ‘private’ but published documents are going to be quite upset to find they are suddenly being indexed by Google.”

Users have also suggested that Google make it much clearer which documents are publicly published and which are not.

ANI