[mattdlondon]

I have been doing something similar for a couple of years.

My printer can scan to a shared drive on my home LAN, saving files as PDFs. These are then uploaded Google Drive where everything else happens automatically (e.g. if you search for something, it will find it in scanned PDFs automatically).

Its super-useful especially since the mobile clients for drive is rock solid. I can be on the phone to someone and pull up basically any document I've had since the 90s in a couple of seconds, for free. Its kinda fun being on the phone to a call centre and being able to pull up data quicker than they can. Tax returns are an absolute doddle when everything is paperless.

The only thing that is missing for me from Google Drive is like a "Knowledge Graph" for my own documents - I can search by keyword or filename etc sure, but I'd like to get some "intelligence" next like we're used to with Google Now, but for my scanned docs, like "show me my bank statements with a payment to Amazon in the last 3 months" etc.

[stephenr]

So now people are trying to give Google more highly sensitive personal information?

/facepalm

[mdp]

Why is this a facepalm? Privacy advocacy is about giving people the option to decide what they share, not preventing them from sharing. I don't have a problem at all if someone voluntarily decides to share their private information with Google. Why does it matter to you what he does with his data?

[stephenr]

It matters for the same reason I think US gun violence is a problem, even though I don't live there.

It matters for the same reason I think banning encryption in the UK is a problem, even though I don't live there.

It matters for the same reason I think the millions of people riding around on motor scooters here without any protective equipment/clothing, often against traffic in the parking/emergency lane is a problem.

The more data people give to an organisation like Google, the more power it gets.

The more power it gets, the more data it gets.

The more data it gets, ....

[jstx]

Going to need you to finish that train of thought. Data aggregation (or power concentration) isn't any more inherently machiavellian than any of the non sequiturs you rattled off.

[Mangalor]

We need legislation to put limits on what Google can do with said data. Until then, these tools should not be left on the table.

[tmaly]

what printer do you use?

[chm]

If you're interested in scanning many documents, I suggest you take a look at a ScanSnap from Fujitsu[1]. I've seen these used in a business environment (~30 machines) without any problem on Windows. The throughput is great and all employees were able to use the machine in less than 5 minutes.

[1]:http://www.fujitsu.com/ca/en/products/computing/peripheral/s...