google deleted all pictures in this blog :(

incredible....one of those moments in which you don't really know if crying or screaming. i'll tell you the story. as you know, we started in google+ and since then we have invited around 300 people to the platform. because we really think that it has an incredible future ahead and in some time it will take facebook's place.

anyways, we took a look into google+ terms of service, and we didn't like very much the type of license that you grant google+ when you upload pictures to the platform:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, 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 Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.“

"You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services."

which basically means that if a travel agency wants geisha pictures for a japan travel catalog they can talk to google+ and they can provide the pictures from all pictures users uploaded to google+. yep, just like that. so we decided not to upload blog's pictures to google+ and keep them only in blogger/blogpost, which do not include those type of services for other companies:

Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.

but....we were astonished when we found out that google had automatically created a photo album in our google+ profile...a photo album with the same name as our blog and which contained all pictures in the blog!! here it is (although it only contains 15 pictures now):

why does it only have 15 pictures now? well, when we saw that album in google+ and knowing their terms of service, we decided to delete that album....without knowing that the album was actually stored in picasa and contained all pictures from this blog! so, by deleting a photo album in google+ we were actually deleting it from picasa and at the same time from blogspot! the problem is that google SAID NOTHING ABOUT THAT ANYTIME DURING THE DELETION PROCESS, NO ALERT, NO WARNING, NO NOTIFICATION, NO INFORMING MESSAGE, NOTHING. they even didn't say anything about storing google+ pictures in picasa albums!

conclusion: if you want to use blogger with the standard photo storage system (which stores the pics in picasa albums) and you create a google+ profile you have two alternatives:

1. if you keep the pictures in your google+ profile you'll be granting google all rights to do with those pictures whatever they want to do, anytime.
2. if you delete your google+ blog album pictures you'll be deleting the blog's pictures, so the blog will have no pictures.

we kindly asked google to do something about this, you can see it here. we have some pictures stored in our hard drive, but some others are not, so unless google recovers all pictures (because we really believe it's their fault not to inform the user that he/she is actually deleting pictures from the blog) some of them are just gone :(

in the meanwhile, and in some of this coincidences until some extent evil, we are leaving tonight (after four planes from tokyo) on vacation to raja ampat in indonesia, completely disconnected and far from civilization.

so when we get back to the online world we'll see what happened.

until then, the blog will be without pictures....we're sorry and sad. very.