Right, and I get how that would be worrisome. That's why I also read through a bunch of forums (those were the other links) of people explaining the wording of their terms of service. Apparently, the language they use in their terms of service is standard legalese used across the board, even by publishing companies (so if you were to go get your book published, you'd read a very similar terms of service from that publishing company). If Google were to word it in any other way, it would arouse even MORE suspicion. The fact that Google is such a HUGE company and hasn't gotten any complaints in that area speaks loudly, plus the fact that companies that changed their terms of service in order to steal content got shut down. Plus, despite whatever sneaky thing they seemed to state earlier, if they also state "In short, what belongs to you stays yours," then that makes it even easier to nail them in a court of law. If they end up doing so, and you find out, you'd definitely win the lawsuit. And you'd also spike probably the worst public outrage imaginable. Google would never risk it. (And I'm speaking specifically about novels. Information on Google Maps about where your company is located, even if you decided to stop using Google Maps, isn't really intellectual property or "yours." It's public information.)
When it says "worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content," that's the standard legalese for their license (not the same as owning your intellectual property) to use, host, and store your content on their servers, reproduce your content in order to store it on other servers and other devices (if you get a new computer and/or share it with a friend and they read it on their device), modify to fit their formatting and services, create derivative works to either translate it or adapt it to fit their terms (they're allowed to remove or modify any content that's, say, something like terrorism or anything illegal, but they can only see it once it's public), and the rest is only if you use their services to publish it or communicate it, etc. A "license" to do that for you is different from them actually owning it instead of you. And again, that kind of language is standard for any kind of company, including a publishing company, and if it was stated in a different way people would have more reason to be concerned.
That said, I was only saying all of that to hopefully ease people's concerns, not to demand I be allowed to post a google docs link into the competition. :P Sorry if it seemed like that, I will definitely just paste it as a comment. :)
