I came across this old google explanation[1], but I'm not sure it (or this blogpost) are very relevant to today. Google claimed that they kept the image around

I came across this old google explanation[1], but I'm not sure it (or this blogpost) are very relevant to today. Google claimed that they kept the image around because it might have been referenced in another site or something, even if the document was deleted, and they appear to still be keeping those old images around, I guess. The claim also seems to be that a cryptographic hash url is as unguessable as a password secured one, though it's not stated directly. In any case, I actually tried it myself (gasp) with a new doc. Dragged in an image, inspected it to find the URL, deleted the doc, and then permanently deleted the doc again from the trash (I assume it hangs out there for 30 days like with gmail's trash). The image stuck around for maybe 15 minutes, but is now gone, so I don't think this applies to docs today, but I can't find any help document that says either way. [1] http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/just-to-clarify.html http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/just-to-clarify.html