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Reading Google Chrome's Fine Print
Much ink and many electrons are being spilled over Google's Chrome browser (discussed here twice in recent days): from deep backgrounders to performance benchmarks to its vulnerability to a carpet-bombing flaw. The latest angle to be explored is Chrome's end-user license agreement. It does not look consumer-friendly. "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."
It looks to me like the out-of-context excerpts here all pertain to your use of Google's services with Chrome. All of these services state that you agree to let Google use the data you generate so I perhaps these clauses are present in Chrome's EULA to cover your use of their apps in Gears?
There's a difference between having an EULA for google services and an EULA for google browser and they should be different. I can understand anything I upload to google being google's property henceforth, but anything I upload using their browser? Basically ... if I use their browser anything I do online becomes their property ... how is that good for me or anyone?
This is yet another sign of google's impending world domination. Won't be long before they own everything people use from software, to clothes, to spouses and children.
Yes! All looking good / working fine here too. Simple no future for me though without AdBlock (or some equivalent).. thought I'd seen the last of those damn smileys forever. "Do no evil".. cmon, it's tantamount to torture nowadays to leave a user unsure if the next tab is going to greet them with a nauseating flash anim or that buzzing noise..
The frequency of badsummary on this site makes me sad.
I bet the editors of this site never intended the tag system to be used primarily as a mechanism for drawing attention to their own incompetence.
Imagine an even more far fetched scenario - your company uses some kind of web mail. One could abstract that Google have some claim over any emails and attachments you send/receive through Chrome.
Clearly this is not what Google intend and they have pasted their generic EULA into place until such times as they can afford to pay for a legal representative to write a shiny new one.
Basically ... if I use their browser anything I do online becomes their property ... how is that good for me or anyone?
Actually the terms say that you grant a royalty-free licence, not ownership. It's still an unacceptable condition, but I feel the distinction is important.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
How is Google going to "reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute the content you submit, post or display on Chrome"? It sounds boilerplate to me (which is kind of surprising, since you'd think Google would have a crack legal team banging one out before Chrome's release).
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And if you think google are just using the information "to allow you to customise things and target ads towards you" then you're having a laugh.
At least government is bound by freedom-of-information acts, elections etc. so we can actually find out about things like RFID tags. There's absolutely no way to tell what Google are up to with the data.
Hmm. Which government is this, bound to follow their own laws? The police state is spreading through the western world, and I'm not seeing many governments willing to be constrained anymore.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Quite right.
Any specific critiques of interface of licensing seem to be moot in the long run, since the stated goal of this browser is to release better tools for ALL the browsers, including ones that are fully open source.
There's not much point in arguing how much Google might monitor or claim usage-rights over, as the obvious goal is a backbone for all browsers that makes their applications run better and gives them more potential to develop new ones. Competing with IE and FF doesn't exactly fit well in their business plan.
The real questions are, if V8 actually does blow all current JS engines away, how soon are we going to see it in a Firefox release? If the independent handling of tabs prove to be the sensible way to handle it, will it make it into FF4?
If the things Google is introducing are better, V8 should get in there quickly, but multiprocess handling of tabs and plugins, etc, will require quite a bit of work to get into existing browsers.
The privacy policy is not relevant, the EULA is.
I work for a small codeshop that does (among other things) document management applications. Our apps have a browser-based UI, and if I'm reading the EULA right, any information (including documents etc.) used with our apps are automatically licensed to Google if the user uses Chrome.
IANAL and I hope I'm wrong, because otherwise I can't see how Chrome could be used with business applications at all.
There's a difference Chrome automatically installs a GoogleUpdate executable and adds it to your autoruns; I really hate it when applications do that.
StartupMonitor is your friend.
I do not so much mind "targeted adds" as much as I mind "add spam". I would love to know about new electronics, new games, new guns, and who the hottest new chick is, but what I dont care about is: making $10000 a month with a home based business, mortgage rates dropping, dancing women on roof tops, or premium life insurance for the elderly. Yes, adds are intrusive, but they provide incentive for people to put up interesting web sites that I like to frequent, without having to charge me a subscription fee (not sure of any other money making model that has succeeded for web sites).
20th century Marxism is not progress...
Yup. Call it "beta", and you can get away with anything. Especially after their cool comic book bragged about their advanced testing techniques that put everyone else to shame.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
In the modern day that is, sadly, merely a semantic difference. If someone has a royalty-free licence to do anything with something they might as well own it and it woudln't make any difference to them or the author.
You might want to look up 'semantic' in a dictionary. It means the opposite of what you think it means.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
It was a light-hearted joke...relax.
Very nice article but it doesn't do anything to fix the problem of what they might do in the future. Since the EULA reserves the right to install basically any functionality they want there is nothing preventing future abuse. Certainly it is a matter of trust. A blog like that increases my paranoia because it reads like a paid advertisement.
btw I am not anti-google. I use google to search for everyything, my primary email is gmail.
I also dont think Google or any company can actually do all the crazy things people can imagine when taking a EULA to extremes. EULAS aren't even worth the paper they're written on.
After playing with it a bit, I'd say it is far more stable than either Safari Beta or Mozilla Beta was. I think it even beats out IE 7 Beta (I didn't play with 8). It has fewer features, though.
Still, pretty impressive for a first release.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
are we talking about slashdot
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by publicly-accessible site features such as forums, comments and bug trackers ("SourceForge Public Content"), the submitting user retains ownership of such SourceForge Public Content; with respect to publicly-available statistical content which is generated by the site to monitor and display content activity, such content is owned by SourceForge. In each such case, the submitting user grants SourceForge the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license.
or google:
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.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Damn them for not making their codebase absolutely perfect from day one! Software should spring into life fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' forehead!
Actually it should. It's not in vogue right at the moment but it's called testing BEFORE release. Do you really think for more critical stuff that the developers can afford to release untested crap and say "oh well it's beta"? Think of mission critical stuff - aircraft and spacecraft, power industry, telecommunications. Okay a web browser doesn't deserve quite the same level of scrutiny, but obvious bugs should be eliminated on day one. It USe to be common practice to at least try to do so, and failing to do so use to be an embarrassment. Now it's just business as usual. (By the way Google would have a lot more credibility using the term if their "beta" software didn't stay in beta for years)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It's perfectly acceptable for a web service - they all have similar clauses - and granting them some rights is even necessary, my post is intended to be public, and they do need to permission to show it to others.
It's certainly not acceptable for a browser to do with private data.
Do you really fail to see the difference, or are you just building strawmen for fun?
I don't think Chrome sends the stuff anywhere (see here), but anyway, this is a theoretical legal problem translating into practice so that no company lawyer will permit any handling of company data with Chrome. This would mean that Chrome will be outright banned.
The implications of the EULA sound nonsensical, and I sincerely hope that someone will soon demonstrate how I'm wrong about this.