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."

Comments

404

[m0ve]

funny thing : i can read this with FF but get 404 using chrome

Re:404

[MyLongNickName]

It blocks Slashdot? It is a bigger success than I thought!

Re:404

[Z00L00K]

Evil question: Are you referring to Slashdot or Chrome?

Considering the fine print, this may mean that they reserve the right to read all data you see through their browser and that also means that they say that "we may have a snoop function" in the browser.

Re:404

[mcvos]

Considering the fine print, this may mean that they reserve the right to read all data you see through their browser and that also means that they say that "we may have a snoop function" in the browser.

That's what it sounds like to me too. They get rights to whatever I post on Slashdot if I use their browser? But even more puzzling, they get rights to whatever I read ?? It really looks like when you use Chrome to access a subscription site, Google suddenly an eternal license to do whatever they like with the content of that site.

Somehow I don't think that's legal.

Re:404

[mr_mischief]

It's the Google standard boilerplate. Their main business is providing services through web sites on their servers. I think in court even Google would be hard pressed to call a browser a "service" instead of a "product".

Yet they probably have to mention the service because they have their crash notifier, their anti-phishing checker, and the Gears libraries to hook into their web services. You have to agree to those terms to use those services no matter the browser.

I think the complaints over the terms are much ado about nothing.

Re:404

[calmofthestorm]

They can claim whatever they want. It's not legal until a court enforces it. More to the point, a non-scary reading (which I'm not convinced is the correct one) is simply that they reserve the rights to the content necessary to represent it to you. With all the recent decisions regarding copying of programs into ram for execution and/or mmap being copying, such precautions aren't absurd. Of course it could also be the scary one, I don't know.

Re:404

[iocat]

FWIW, My company just banned using Chrome based on the EULA.

Re:404

[calmofthestorm]

GOod call on their part. Personally, I'm expecting a correction from Google soon. Until then, I'm avoiding Chrome like a windows-only product. wait...

Re:404

[SplinterOfChaos]

What does this mean to people who surf for porn?

It's going to be a long night at Google.

Re:404

[GPS Tracking]

I can use Slashdot just fine from Chrome.

This is not Chrome-specific.

[DrEldarion]

I doubt this has anything to do with Chrome. It's taken straight out of their Google Accounts terms: https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl=en

See point 11.1.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Swizec]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[tirerim]

Even if it's part of their generic license, how it applies to Chrome is still important. What does "submitting, posting, or displaying" even mean in the context of a browser? It seems at least slightly plausible that could be interpreted to include personally generated content that the user views with the browser. I hope that it doesn't really work that way, but I am not a lawyer.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[asdir]

And imagine: If you would take it literally how that would work with other stuff that has a similar regulation once it is uploaded? Who owns the rights to distribute flickr images then? Flickr, me or Google? Or all? If so, what is a right worth then? I can only imagine that Google copied their general EULA without thinking how it applies to browser and content submitted through it.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[FilterMapReduce]

Google has announced that Chrome is to be open source. If this has the conventional meaning of being licensed under an OSI-approved license, or anything remotely resembling one, then a EULA would be redundant and unenforceable. (Even if Google tried to exercise some implicit contractual terms around the use of Chrome, someone could simply exercise the permissions given under the open source license to repackage the code under a different name with no EULA.)

I'm not going to RTFA at this hour, but the only reasonable interpretation is that the terms in question apply only to Google's services and not the browser software itself. Anything else would be audacious even for a company without Google's mostly good reputation.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[minginqunt]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[hdparm]

It's really strange stuff. Someone might think that even transfers/deposits one makes while accessing own bank account also belong to Google. Or stuff someone buys on Ebay. Once on-line voting and Chrome become prevalent, Google will also become The President.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[rugatero]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[edelholz]

Isn't that already true for GMail? Everyone here seems to agree that the EULA is taken directly from other Google services, GMail being one of them.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Rogerborg]

I'm all for syntactic sugar, but isn't badsummary completely redundant when it follows the 'kdawson' tag?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Swizec]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Idaho]

There's a difference between having an EULA for google services and an EULA for google browser and they should be different.

Here is the privacy policy for Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/privacy.html

It does not mention the terms in this article, which clearly seem related to google services and not the browser.

Mind you, the privacy policy does mention unique ID's for each browser, and sending them to google every time you start the browser. Also, Chrome automatically installs a GoogleUpdate executable and adds it to your autoruns; I really hate it when applications do that. So it's still pretty bad, but not in exactly the way this "article" makes it out to be.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[savuporo]

Chrome is _going_ to be open source ? Whatever happened to "release early, release often" ideology ? I mean, if they decided that its going to be open source from the outset, why wouldnt they be doing the development in the open as well ?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[pipatron]

The difference is of course that they can't deny you access to the information. That's what ownership normally means: you can have something for yourself, and deny it to others.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[centuren]

I routinely admonish coworkers (above and below me) for sending email through a 3rd party webmail provider (usually them sending something to my gmail address rather than work address, for some unknown reason). When I'm working remotely and the normal server goes down, I'll use Google's SMTP server if it's the best working option, but it goes through encrypted.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Swizec]

Oh great, not only have they "stolen" my stuff, they get to also rub the fact they're making millions off my work without paying me a dime in. Very good yes.

If something like that happened btw, could you sue?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[sholsinger]

Seeing as how they seem to be integrating Google services at a very low level within the browser, it makes sense to incorporate the Google Accounts and Google Apps EULAs into that of Chrome.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[wildstoo]

The source is available now, and from what I understand they're using the BSD License.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[zby]

OK - so it is copied from the Google Accounts TOS. Does that change anything? It is in the Chrome EULA - so it applies to Chrome. And also this is stated at the beginning at the EULA that Service in that document means collectively: "products, software, services and web sites" - with Chrome being 'software' as I understand.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Chuck Chunder]

http://code.google.com/chromium/

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[LowlyWorm]

I have to admit the EULA did make me cringe a little. (I should also add I am using Chrome as I write this). If Google turns evil I will uninstall it. Also, what it seemed to say didn't look like open source to me. So far I still prefer Fire Fox. Chrome is just too...cute.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Kagura]

Google Earth and potentially other programs install the Google Updater, too. I've come to expect this from other applications, but it takes me totally by surprise from Google, and I'm not just being petty. That said, I don't interfere with the Google Updater, because overall I want all my Google applications kept easily up to date. There are enough of them (Google Earth/Desktop/Chrome) that it is nicer to have an autoupdater keeping track.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[MacroRex]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Goaway]

Except when they do, of course.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[dotancohen]

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.

They could probably afford a better education for those children than the current world governments are doing. They probably have more of an interest in having an educated public as well.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Eighty7]

Most of the inflammatory or just plain stupid stuff belongs to kdawson. I've been keeping a rough tally since zebras/aadvarks & he doesn't disappoint.

this.
"Anathem" Exclusive Video At MySpace - kdawson, this is news?
Idle: User Charged With Taking ISP Tech Hostage - samzenpus
Stanford's "Autonomous" Helicopters Learn - kdawson - just had to add that bit on "autonomous"
Idle: Bottom of the Barrel Book Reviews -- Special Operations Team Raptor - samzenpus
How HP Could Turn a Novelty Into a Revolution - kdawson
Microsoft Patents "Pg Up" and "Pg Dn" - kdawson
Zebras Get Less Spam Than Aardvarks - kdawson

Reminds me of the kdawsonfud tag a while back. He does post decent stuff half of the time, but they could get rid of almost all the crap by dragging him out back. The cynic in me thinks flamebait is good for pageviews & ad impressions.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[dotancohen]

I doubt this has anything to do with Chrome. It's taken straight out of their Google Accounts terms: https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl=en

See point 11.1.

Exactly. Chrome was made by programmers, and released that way. Now the lawyers will get their turn and warp google's catch-all conservative CYA EULA into something specific to this browser.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Petrushka]

It certainly does not appear in any licence associated with Chrome. It is not only completely fictional (note that the article does not actually link or provide any reference to an actual EULA), it is active shilling. For reference, here is a list of some articles written by Ina Fried for CNET:

• Be sure to read Chrome's fine print (2/9/08)
• What Chrome means for Microsoft (2/9/08)
• Microsoft yanks Money off retail shelves (8/8/08)
• Windows Home Server update released (21/7/08)
• Site created to share [Microsoft's] Live Mesh invites (29/4/08)
• What's in Ray Ozzie's Mesh? (18/4/08)
• Microsoft buys airfare predictor Farecast (17/4/08)
• Does Microsoft need a value menu? (26/3/08)
• Microsoft looking for a Silverlight bullet (5/3/08)
• NBC looks to win Silverlight medal (5/3/08)
• At Redmond, Wikipedia becomes Micropedia (5/3/08)

There are a few other non-Microsoft-shilling articles, but precious few.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[houghi]

And then read http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-communication/

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[deniable]

Forget business, think online banking.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[AaronLawrence]

Actually, I have been thinking lately that some of the summaries are really excellent, particularly in linking back to previous stories and explaining why the story is different now. There is a certain significant minority that seem to be too misleading about articles to be just accident, but thats a minority. Maybe bad summaries have replaced dupes?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once on-line voting and Chrome become prevalent, Google will also become The President.

Depends how many votes Diebold keeps for themselves.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[khakipuce]

I'm not sure that your assertion is entirely correct. Many open source licenses only deal with the source code, they are silent on binaries. So an open source license may grant you the right to copy, modify and redistribute the source but in general they say nothing about binaries. Let's face it, most people are going to down load the binary which is not necessarily distrubuted under the open source license (it is not source code) and even if it is, I'm guessing that additional terms can be added to the binary over and above the source license.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[gi.net]

The parent is right. Here is the complete sentence (notice that the first phrase has been omitted by the poster):

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence 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 licence 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.

What I understand is that you must allow google to let them publish and modify the documents you put on their servers. For me it's to be able to backup the data, change the files formats, etc...

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Simon Brooke]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many open source licenses only deal with the source code, they are silent on binaries.

Google Chrome is licensed under the BSD License (as someone else pointed out) which says:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met...

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[cdrudge]

They didn't steal anything. You give them permission when you accept the license agreement and you upload something. If you don't want them to "steal" whatever, don't use their software and/or don't upload anything.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[zby]

Here is the link for you: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html And the referenced text is there.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Vectronic]

Agreed, so far I dont see anything that either Opera or Firefox can't do... not to mention that Chrome is twice the size of Opera, and almost 3 times as large as Firefox with less functionality.

Also that it installs into ..\Documents and Settings\%UserName%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\* annoying.

From which I tried finding the EULA as was too lazy to read it during setup, and it doesnt seem to be there, nor within the application itself, seems to only be at http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html

Although I do find it too cute/clean/simple, currently it seems more directed at mobiles than desktops, or maybe im just more fond of options than some, although I was/am fairly impressed with its speed, currently there are too few options, and annoyances (basically meaning im not used to them) it does have some good though, like the "Element Inspector" is quick and easy, but the seperate process rather than seperate threads, is IMHO crap frankly... 15-20MB's extra memory and 2 threads for each.

120MB's and some 40 threads, and 7 processes to open 7 Google.com's...

45MB's and 35 threads, one process to do the same in Opera (Although Slashdot is open aswell, and its been open for about 2 weeks, might change on a clean run)

35MB's and 15 threads, one process in Firefox...

But this is a Beta, and a rather early one at that, it does have potential for some people.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[ari_j]

For your statistical pleasure: http://slashdot.org/tags/kdawsonsucks

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[MightyYar]

It probably doesn't count as "stealing" (especially since you can't "steal" IP, remember?), but it is certainly unconscionable and I'm confident would be ruled so by courts. It's just like those credit card agreements that say you lose all rights by agreeing to use this card. Oh, and this agreement can be changed at any time, customer to be notified by an ad in the Sacramento Penny Saver.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[RiotingPacifist]

but as you can compile from source using the licesne for gain is moot, meaning that the license is just there to cover their asses as the browser may not render pages perfectly and this may get them sued in sue happy America.

P.s this and all slashdot posts are held under a vitually identical EULA.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[RiotingPacifist]

so unacceptable that you happily post under an almost identical license to complain about it.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[iansocool]

look up 'semantic' in a dictionary

se*man*tic
-adjective
of or pertaining to semantics.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Swizec]

Yes, I understand they are/might be, but I don't care because I post here knowing full well I'm adding content to slashdot and don't even really care who owns the post. But if my browser had an EULA saying everything I do using it becomes somebody's property (or whatever) I'd have a real problem using it to post to my blog, access my bank etc. etc.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[RiotingPacifist]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[AvitarX]

From what I can tell (based on comments), the code (chromium) is BSD and available from google code. The browser Chrome is licensed differently with a EULA.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Dog-Cow]

Open Source licenses allow "release early, release often". They do not require it. There is no need to buy in to some idealogy just to use a license.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[lzdt]

There's a difference between having an EULA for google services and an EULA for google browser and they should be different.

Thats the point. They should, but they're not.
German EULA for chrome:
1.1 Die Nutzung der Produkte, Software, Dienste und Websites von Google (in diesem Dokument zusammenfassend als "Services" bezeichnet..
Translated:
1.1 Usage of the products, software, services and web sites from google (summarized in this document called as "services"..

Someone else sees any parallelism in this "Don't be evil"-company and company of Bob Rife in Snow Crash wikipedia from Neal Stephenson? :)

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[CountBrass]

The owner can do always do anything they like with their code whether in binary or source form: they could release it under a FOSS license today and choose to release v2 under a closed license if they wanted to. The license only binds everyone else (if you don't like the license then full copyright restrictions apply, including loading it into your machine's memory to run). FOSS licenses absolutely can cover binaries generally they something like "If you redistribute this binary you must also make the source available".

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[CountBrass]

I think there's a big difference and that is that the Slashdot agreement is constrained to Slashdot. The Google EULA applies globally. In my opinion I find the Slashdot requirement reasonable as a result and the Google one completely unreasonable (I'll be sticking with Safari and FF).

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[savuporo]

Valid point. More importantly,

http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/getting-started

And for the impatient, here is the meat of it

gclient config http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/chrome
gclient sync

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Jason1729]

I can understand anything I upload to google being google's property henceforth

How in the world can you understand that? If you take your pictures to be printed at a store, do the images become the store's property forever? If I use M$ Word to write a novel (or write a school essay), does the work become Microsoft's property forever? If I build my website on hosting account, does the website become the property of the host forever (if the host is not google)? If you hire an accountant to do your taxes, does your financial information become his property?

There are thousands of examples. It is total BS that google claims they own any rights to material uploaded to their servers, and I find it a very bleak commentary on our future that people like you are willing to take it for granted that they can and then see how much farther the slippery slope goes.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[CountBrass]

Only if you have the authority to make such an agreement. If you can't agree to give away the company's goods, in whatever form, then you're incapable of signing them over to Google. Obviously you'll need to find a way from stopping Chrome from shipping this information off to Google anway (be interesting to see what Chrome does if you put up a firewall rule to block whatever address it tries to send stuff to, or perhaps redirect it to null.)

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[shaka]

And it's also in the EULA in question, the one for Chrome, available here.

See Section 11.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[ShieldW0lf]

I share your concern. I was planning to add Google Chrome to our Selenium test suite and see how our application performs, but I'm thinking I'd better hold off and check with the management. From the look of it, we might need to warn our clients not to use this browser, or actively block it from the admin interface.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[moonbender]

You might want to look up 'semantic' in a dictionary. It means the opposite of what you think it means.

Pff -- there's merely a minor semantic difference between the two.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[swillden]

That's a lousy definition. Here's a better one: "Of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language."

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Swizec]

When I write in Word, I'm using my computer my stuff yadayada, it should all remain mine.

When I use a host I'm paying for space and they're promising what I put on remains mine and I am the sole person responsible in how it's shown.

When I upload to google I'm adding content to THEIR website, it's theirs. Just like when someone comments on my blog that comment is mine and I can do whatever I want with it. This is because when someone is responsible for the way things are displayed they need licence to be allowed to do stuff with it otherwise they can't display it.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Blackeagle_Falcon]

These Terms of Service apply to the executable code version of Google Chrome. Source code for Google Chrome is available free of charge under open source software license agreements at http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html.

The EULA only applies to the compiled binaries that Google distributes. The source code is licensed under BSD.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[sm62704]

You might want to look up 'semantic' in a dictionary.

You might want to link a dictionary when you accuse someone of ignorance, and quote it as well.

semantic Audio Help /smæntk/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[si-man-tik] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
-adjective 1. of, pertaining to, or arising from the different meanings of words or other symbols: semantic change; semantic confusion.
2. of or pertaining to semantics.

Also, semantical.

[Origin: 1655-65; Gk sémantikós having meaning, equiv. to sémant(ós) marked (séman-, base of sémaínein to show, mark + -tos verbal adj. suffix; akin to sêma sign) + -ikos -ic]

--Related forms
semantically, adverb

semantic Audio Help (s-mn'tk) Pronunciation Key
adj.
Of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language.
Of, relating to, or according to the science of semantics.

[French sémantique, from Greek smantikos, significant, from smantos, marked, from smainein, sman-, to signify, from sma, sign.]

seman'tically adv.

semantic

1894, from Fr. sémantique, applied by Michel Bréal (1883) to the psychology of language, from Gk. semantikos "significant," from semainein "to show, signify, indicate by a sign," from sema "sign" (Doric sama). Semantics "the study of the relationship between linguistic symbols and their meanings" is recorded from 1893. Earlier this was called semasiology (1847, from Ger. Semasiologie, 1829).

I believe he used the term correctly, and said exactly what he meant. There is no real difference; only wordplay.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Minwee]

You might want to look up 'semantic' in a dictionary. It means the opposite of what you think it means.

Are you trying to say that it doesn't mean "bloated, ineffectual, resource hogging security software"? Maybe I have just been spelling it wrong.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[SpinyNorman]

That is where it was copied from, but they've still chosen to specifically apply it to Chrome - that's the agreement you have to click to accept before downloading Chrome.

I'm sure as hell not going to use a web viewer (browser) that makes legal claim to anything I post or upload using it!

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Jason1729]

Actually, from the very bottom of every slashdot page "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2008 SourceForge, Inc"

You absolutely do not own posts to your blog (at least under US and Canadian copyright laws).

By what you said, when you upload to a paid host, you are adding content to THEIR webserver, the fact that you pay them has no impact on this. Google is ad-supported, so when you upload content to their website, you are paying them by viewing ads and proving content so that others will view ads. Of course payment simply doesn't matter.

If I take your arguement, the local radio talk show beams content that they own into my home without my consent. Can I simply claim that since they put their content in my house, I now own it?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[RegularFry]

It does not mention the terms in this article, which clearly seem related to google services and not the browser.

It looks to me more like someone copy-and-pasted without thinking. Or consulting a lawyer. The EULA defines "Services" to include Google's "products", which would seem to include Chrome.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[juhaz]

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?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Swizec]

The radio host is providing a service which you requested to be provided in one way or another (for example by tuning into the station). Furthermore most of the content they're beaming they don't own but are licenced to use.

As far as webservers go, their EULAs say I own and am responsible for anything I upload, they do this to cover their arses if I did anything illegal.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[MacroRex]

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.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mcvos]

Once on-line voting and Chrome become prevalent, Google will also become The President.

Depends how many votes Diebold keeps for themselves.

If states use Chrome to order Diebold machines, then what happens?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mc900ftjesus]

You do know that large companies have corporate lawyers on staff, right?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Awptimus Prime]

but it takes me totally by surprise from Google

Why? I've been predicting for years the Google love will eventually start turning into hatred. We are talking about a publicly traded corporate entity with much of it's base in capitalist Amerikka here.

If Microsoft, or anyone else, released an application with a updater process that remained after uninstalling, there would be so much howling on here the thread would simply implode.

But it's Google, so people are trying to defend it by saying it's beta, but leaving out a single line in the uninstall script would have removed the updater executable, so it seems suspect to me. More like someone, somewhere said, "No, we don't want that file removed, take that line out" after Dev initially used common sense and would be unlikely to forget something like this.

More howling, imo, needs to happen in regards to them releasing this with a lot of Windows specific code. The way I understand things, you try to keep your source as posix as possible from the start and not write a Windows application for beta, then slowly rework your code to something more Linux friendly. I could be wrong.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Awptimus Prime]

How about not running programs with these licenses in the first place. It's not like Chrome can do anything other browsers can't.

People seem desperate to justify this program. Going so far as to say "It's more stable than FF!" above, though it's only been around for 3 days. I'm running a week old SVN of FF and couldn't tell you if it's more stable than the official FF3 since, well, neither have crashed on me in quite some time.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

That's slightly different. Slashdot is a public forum, and it's reasonable to expect that comments could be used by /. to promote the site. Since it says the comments are owned by the posters, they should also have to properly attribute any comments they use (I'd expect; but then, IANAL).

Chrome, OTOH, might be used to post a private post to a blog — which nobody can read unless they're on a list of "allowed" people — and Google's terms of use say they claim rights to use that.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

I'm sorry? "Semantic" means, to paraphrase, variations in terminology which differ in their dictionary definitions but, practically speaking, have no real difference. GP's point was "royalty-free license == ownership (for all practical purposes)".

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Nephroth]

Only to content you post to Google services, which means that they don't own any rights to this post, for instance, but they retain rights to reproduce, display, and reuse any content that I upload to YouTube, or any other Google site. Hate to say it, but this is a condition of basically any Web2.0 service, and a source of my dislike for the cloud.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Carewolf]

Well Chrome is based on WebKit which in turn is based on KHTML which is LGPL. Parts of Chrome might be BSD, the overall project will be LGPL.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Carewolf]

I believe he used the term correctly, and said exactly what he meant. There is no real difference; only wordplay.

Well, he was trying to make the difference sound small: "only a semantic change", but ended up being truthfull, since a semantic change is a complete different meaning only with the same name.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[markhb]

More howling, imo, needs to happen in regards to them releasing this with a lot of Windows specific code. The way I understand things, you try to keep your source as posix as possible from the start and not write a Windows application for beta, then slowly rework your code to something more Linux friendly. I could be wrong.

Given that their largest userbase is going to be Windows users (just by force of numbers), it doesn't seem reasonable to me to want to start by writing for an entirely different API, especially for a GUI application. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that it has to be written for the Unix* world.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mdwh2]

Yes, but it's not clear that Google have released their binary under the BSD - only the source code.

So sure, you can download the source, and then distribute from that a compiled binary to others. But if you download the binary from Google, then the BSD won't apply if that binary isn't licenced under BSD.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

Obviously Google is trying to cover their ass against claims of infringement by their practices of caching, snippets, etc. They want to ensure their continued ability to index, cache, and spider the web... it sounds to me like if I use Chrome to post a private post to my blog it violates the terms of use because Google can't index it. Or what if I use Chrome to access an online CMS and put a robots.txt file on my site? That probably violates their terms too...

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mdwh2]

I don't see why this is "badsummary" - just because they have the same EULA for other things doesn't stop it being true (it just makes it worse).

I can imagine that this was more down to copy-and-paste incompetence rather than malice, but the summary is perfectly accurate. The summary doesn't even make any conclusions - it simply quotes the EULA for all to read.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[darkmeridian]

Dude. The license users grant to Google are 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." The term "promote" concerns me because I don't want the Facebook photos I upload to be used in a Google ad campaign, but it's not like Google can run off and publish all of my submissions to Wikipedia for its own profit.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[houstonbofh]

Well Chrome is based on WebKit which in turn is based on KHTML which is LGPL. Parts of Chrome might be BSD, the overall project will be LGPL.

You got it backwards. The overall project is BSD, and the components are whatever license they come with. It listed about 10 different ones...

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[ljuwaidah]

It also appears here: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[louzerr]

I think you're right ... but you spelled "truthful" wrong. Therefore, your point is ignored, and you'll be teased about your spelling instead.

What was this thread about, anyway?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mr_mischief]

Gears and Google Search are integrated into the browser. Therefore, their legal department probably felt it necessary to include the agreements for those services. A web browser is not a service. It's an application you download and install locally, which is typically considered a product.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mr_mischief]

LGPL allows one to link to projects that are neither GPL nor LGPL. Only the updates to the LGPL library need to be released under the LGPL. That's the difference between the LGPL and the GPL, and is the whole reason for the LGPL to exist.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mr_mischief]

What part of the definition of "web browser" makes you think it's defined to be a "service"? Do you think the terms might be there to cover the cases when Chrome is used to post to Google's actual services, using the integration into Google Search, their anti-phishing list, the geolocation services, GMail, and other services that are integrated with Chrome through the inclusion of Gears?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Sancho]

I think that what really happened is that Google screwed up, copied their Google Apps license verbatim, and didn't think about the repercussions. A license like that doesn't even make sense in the context of a browser--it makes sense in the context of a service. It's a boilerplate bit of text which prevents me from successfully suing a company, say Slashdot, for publishing content I posted.

In other words, Slashdot's lawyers would laugh at me for even trying to sue Slashdot for publishing this particular post, which is copyrighted by me.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Awptimus Prime]

Well, they claim to be releasing a Linux version "soon".

Also, considering without so much free software, such as the Linux kernel, Google would have likely never gotten off the ground, they should throw a bone back to the community as a symbolic gesture, if nothing else. Running to the single largest source of revenue while disregarding the past, which is what they are doing, is enough to justify pondering the "evil corporate entity" side of things-- especially with that EULA on it.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Requiem18th]

LOL Sure slashdot is stoopid. Why else would they use a obviously browser license in their content publishing site?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Sancho]

Right. Before Windows had automatic updates, people lamented about how hard it was to get your average user to update. Would your grandmother go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com periodically if you told her to? Most probably wouldn't.

Google probably would have been smart to include this as an option on the installer, checked by default. Then again, for most home users, this is really an option which should be on by default, and at least slightly difficult to change. When the first big Chrome malware hits, we'll all be crying for updates, won't we?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Jason1729]

Wow...just wow.

If someone mails you a package are you "requesting it" by opening it and therefore required to pay for it? You should read up on mail fraud law before answering.

When the radio station sends their EM waves into my house, I am in no way requesting it. And, in fact, when I host content on google, they explicitly are requesting it. They have web forms or whatever to upload my data which they welcome.

I explicitly said talk radio because it is mostly content that they do own (except for syndicated shows)...I was pre-answering that argument.

That EULA will never hold up in court because copyright law trumps and EULA. Otherwise I can build an EULA that says I own all music played on the radio I built...the only thing preventing me from doing so is that copyright trumps it.

Their arses are covered if you do anything illegal *because* you retain ownership, they are just a service provider. If you download child-porn over a phone line the phone company is not liable because they assume no ownership, they are just a data-transfer service. If they assert ownership, then they must make sure nothing illegal passes through their connection or they are liable. Same for google. If they claim ownership they're responsible, if they don't (which is the law), then they're not responsible.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mr_mischief]

Would you care to cite that? I just re-read the agreement and found no such definition.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[ergo98]

Woooosh....

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Sancho]

I've been tinkering on and off with a scheme to back up my regular mail to Gmail. I encrypt the body, but not the headers. This way, if my mail host goes down, I still have easy access to my archived mail.

The biggest problem I have yet to overcome is Google's zealous spam filter. So far, I've been unable to overcome it automatically, and therefore some messages get lost unless I log into my account and mark them as "not spam."

Regardless, Google is free to the encrypted versions of my e-mail. I'm not that concerned about it.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mr_mischief]

Okay, just for shits and giggles let's say it applies fully to Chrome and that they actually intend to use it the way it's stated. Here's how it's stated:

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.

(emphasis mine)

How in the world is having your bank account information, your proprietary software, your great novel, or anything else that you posted to a site they don't own going to help them display or distribute their services? How does it help them promote their services to others?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[TuringTest]

"release early, release often" is not an idea-logy, it's a method-logy.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mr_mischief]

Um... I am looking at http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html in FF 3 on Linux right now.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[teh kurisu]

Exactly. This is along the same lines of Apple forbidding the use of Safari for Windows on Windows. They've copied their standard licence, which is written with web-apps in mind. If you actually read the licence, a lot of it makes very little sense in the context of a web browser.

It's shocked me since I became part of the corporate world what people will agree to when told, "It's just a standard document". At least in this case you don't have to be bound by it, as long as you're willing to build from source.

(This comment was posted from the Chrome binary, so if Google start to reproduce it elsewhere I will be incredibly amused.)

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[calmofthestorm]

This scientist, for one, welcomes the arrival of our googly overlords, and offers his assistance in rounding up the resistance.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[juhaz]

What part of the definition of "web browser" makes you think it's defined to be a "service"?

How about the part where they specifically define "service" to include SOFTWARE AND PRODUCTS, in addition to the usual Google services and web sites?

For crying out loud, READ the damn thing, please.

Do you think the terms might be there to cover the cases when Chrome is used to post to Google's actual services, using the integration into Google Search, their anti-phishing list, the geolocation services, GMail, and other services that are integrated with Chrome through the inclusion of Gears?

No, because those services are already covered by their own terms, regardless of which application you use them through.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[iansocool]

I like the definition I posted. Actually I think it's funny how dictionaries use the word in the definition. If only I was allowed to do that on quizzes in grade school!

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Trillan]

It's almost certainly a remanent from the license agreement for one of their online services. For an online service, the clause is fairly standard, although still (honestly) unacceptable. ("That cool thing you created in Google Qwerty? We can use that in our banner ads.")

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[ceoyoyo]

"You absolutely do not own posts to your blog (at least under US and Canadian copyright laws)."

Say what? Anything you post to your own blog, barring some agreement to the contrary, is automatically copyright you, at least in Canada, and I'm pretty sure US law is comparable. If your blog is hosted with a specific blog hosting company, like Google, then there might be an agreement to the contrary. If you pay a host for some web space then there almost certainly is not. My web site and all it's contents are owned by me, though the disk space it sits on is leased from a provider.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[ceoyoyo]

No, they'll be indicted. It's illegal to transfer ownership of your vote to anyone else.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[marbux]

I'm a retired lawyer. This really sounds like a screwup, not a scandal. The language under discussion refers to "services" not to "software" but it's a EULA for software.

My guess is that some lawyer got behind schedule, had more adrenaline going than grey matter trying to meet the deadline, and accidentally copied and pasted the wrong paragraph from the wrong document into the wrong document that was open at the same time. Or copied too much and didn't notice it.

There are a lot of copy and paste operations in law office contract work because it takes lots of time to research legal requirements. Contract language that has already been vetted at the law library is often too valuable to waste by reinventing the wheel every time you need the same term. Contracts are often more copy and paste than original.

Abraham Lincoln said that a lawyer's reputation is his biggest stock in trade. Others say it's the size of the law firm's collection of legal forms. Short story: There's lots of content recycling in the law office.

A lot of law offices go beyond copy and paste take another tack and use profession-specific document assembly software. With some, you select from optional paragraphs for a selected kind of contract. A careless mouse click and you get the wrong paragraph.

If anyone is in the mood to develop it, we still don't have that kind of open source software available and there's a market for it. There's even an XML open standard developed by the legal profession for that kind of work that's languishing for lack of implementations. See the spec at the OASIS eContracts Technical Committee. Designed to be used in conjunction with existing XML document word processing formats, an extension of UBL.

Anyway, I suggest standing by seeing what Google has to say about it. My guess is that there's going to be an apology for a screwup and a new EULA substituted in short order.

It's all too easy to underestimate how many interruptions you'll have and get behind on meeting a deadline, then foul up in the rush to get the document out the door on time. Last minute changes play their part too.

Lawyers are susceptible to human error, just like software engineers. In fact, at least one lawyer is wrong in just about every case. :-) I doubt there's any real scandal here; Just another human being doing what human beings do best, making a mistake.

Paul E. Merrell, J.D.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[LarsG]

The way I understand things, you try to keep your source as posix as possible from the start and not write a Windows application for beta

Given that the Windows market share is at 90%+ it would be kinda counter productive not to make a Windows version if they want as many people as possible able to actually run the application.

For an application that is intended for porting to other systems, it does however make sense to separate the generic stuff and the OS-specific stuff. That is, have as much as possible of the javascript engine, html engine, network stack etc OS-independent (plain libc/STL in case of c/c++).

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mr_mischief]

I did "READ the damn thing", but I read it early yesterday and it's a long document. I didn't remember that, but I saw the definition upon rereading. Contracts do have a wide berth to define terms, but since IANAL I couldn't tell you how wide.

Did you also read the Google general privacy policy, which states how they use data?

Did you read the Chrome-specific privacy policy at http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/privacy.html?

Did you notice that when agreeing to the Terms of Service, you're agreeing to to use of your data in accordance with those privacy documents, according to section 7 of the ToS?

Did you notice in 11.1 of ToS (the document everyone is pissy about), it says they can only use the data to render their services or promote the services to others?

Did you notice that in the privacy policy for Chrome they specify exactly what they collect under what circumstances and how they use it?

Did you notice that in the privacy policy for Chrome they say they will notify you of any changes to the privacy policy, even though in general the services (lower-case 's') are not bound to notify you of changes?

Did you notice right in the privacy policy for Chrome that Google explains how or gives links to instructions how to disable features that send additional information?

A legal document that refers to other legal documents is not complete without the text of those other legal documents. If it was, it would have no reason to reference them.

Did you read those policies and additional terms?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

Every method starts as an idea. What's your point?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

According to point 1.1 of the EULA, "Services" includes software, which includes Chrome. Therefore, by typing that post into Chrome, you agree to give Google all the rights to it.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html:

1.1 Your use of Google's products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the "Services" in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Google.

Emphasis mine.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

The English EULA says the same thing. http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

It is total BS that google claims they own any rights to material uploaded to their servers

It's worse than that. They claim to have rights to any data that's sent through their "Services", which explicitly includes their software. So because Chrome hacks together your POST request, Google's TOS claims that they have rights to use whatever was in that form.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

It most definitely is. From point 1.1 of their TOS, "Google's products, software, services and web sites" are "referred to collectively as the 'Services'".

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

I think GP meant that the main Chrome site doesn't link to that page if it detects Linux. Apparently the page loads just fine if you get linked to it from elsewhere.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[BIGELLOW]

Even further, people are really taking that particular paragraph too literally.

That particular paragraph, when it applies to their services, doesn't mean that you are giving them permission to take your stuff and put it up for the world to see and use. The reality is more complex, and has to do with computer technology and lawsuits. They're just protecting themselves, not trying to take ownership over the world.

Think of it this way... if you use Gmail and someone sends you an attachment and their virus checkers detect a virus in it and remove the attachment... essentially what they just did was they modified your property. You could sue them. Unless, of course, the EULA you agreed to gave them the right to adapt, modify, etc...

Furthermore, if you use Google Notebook, for instance... and you decide to publish one of your notebooks, you might then turn around and say it was an accident and sue them for making your private information available to the world.

So, they have two options... prompt you with legaleze with every button click, checkbox change, link click... OR, create an all-encompassing, all-powerful EULA that says, by using their services, you give them permission to do all of these things and to tweak the data around, manipulate it, publish it, etc... so that the service is convenient to use. That's why, at the end, it says:

"This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services..." It isn't for purposes of them owning the content and profiting from it, it's to give them the legal right to make these services available which might house and manipulate your data in ways that you prompt with your mouse and keyboard.

In any case, as most have pointed out, this EULA is for Google's services, not for the browser software.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Jason1729]

Say what? Anything you post to your own blog, barring some agreement to the contrary, is automatically copyright you, at least in Canada, and I'm pretty sure US law is comparable

Actually this is exactly what I was saying from the other point of view, I think you missed the earlier part of the thread. If you own a blog and somebody else posts on it, they, not you, retain copyright of their post because exactly as you say copyright is automatically created as soon as the work is. So from your point of view, if you post to any blog (your own or somebody else's), that post remains your intellectual property.

It's the poster I was replying to who seems to be under the impression that if you own a blog, you own all the posts on it, even those made by other people.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Poltras]

Whoosh

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[HiThere]

You may be right, but IANAL, so I can't tell.

One of the good things about Free Software is that you only need to deal with a very few licenses...I used to say OSI approved before they accepted MS' offering. This means you only need to learn the catches on a few licenses.

Google has intentionally chosen not to use one of those licenses, so it's on Google's shoulders to make clear what they mean. I'm no lawyer, so I don't know what they mean by "promote their services". I've got idea, but no certainty. This applies at several places during the reading of the small part of the EULA that I read.

To me the summary appeared to be "What's our is ours, and what's yours is ours." As such I consider it an absolute benefit that it's only available for MSWind.

Again, IANAL, and I'm reading this with a pessimistic set of mind conditioned by other contracts I've encountered, and, admittedly, by the SCO lawsuits. As such I'll freely admit that my reading is precautionary, but I dispute any assertion that it's unwarranted. I didn't bother to read the whole thing, because once I got to the point of "I'll never agree to this" reading more seemed (and seems) pointless.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Poltras]

If I might jump to conclusion, he meant that there was no difference between the two, in meaning. Thus, the difference is clearly not semantic. As such, he used the wrong term.

For the record, the right term would syntactic. Re-read the OP post.

This post was brought to you by Pedantis. Pedantis, the right solution to the wrong problems!

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[HiThere]

Typing or causing to be displayed? If this is a browser, then it makes a significant difference.

OTOH, I do acknowledge that this is an attempt to blend browsers with other software applications, so it's not THAT significant...but it's still not trivial.

What about any passwords that you may type? What about the results of sites to you visit after typing in the password...like your bank?

I find the terms totally unacceptable. Possibly just because I don't know how a court would interpret them, but then I don't know how a court would interpret them.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[fatphil]

The slashdot one covers things that you upload to slashdot specifically in order for them to propagate it to all and sundry.

The google one covers everything on every site you use for any purpose. Including your online bank.

The two are utterly unrelated. When you sign up at a gym for a martial arts course, you indemnify them against you getting punched in the nose. That's because getting punched in the nose is an expected component of martial arts courses. "We reserve the right to punch you in the nose", however, is not a desirable clause when signing up at your local library for a library card, say.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[HiThere]

But Google could just automatically take the stuff, and afterwards claim that it was acting in good faith on your authority. Which it would have been...unless you can prove that they were scheming for this scenario.

Google might well be off the hook, but *you* wouldn't be. And once information has been released, it's quite hard to recall it. So you might end up liable for considerable damages.

Safest to just avoid this monster.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[HiThere]

You don't know the company lawyers that I've known. Many of them seem to be anxious to win a case...which means having a case to win.

They also don't seem very knowledgeable about the technical possibilities. They can't conceive that a contract could be enforced by technical measures rather than by legal measures...so they argue that no court would force them to do such a thing, ignoring that a technical measure might already have executed the terms of the contract, and *you* would be in the position of trying to be made whole against the terms of a contract to which you have agreed. The court might, indeed, refuse to enforce such a contract, but it wouldn't act to damage another company acting on the terms of an agreed upon contract. Big difference.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[HiThere]

But they aren't claiming ownership, merely the world-wide rights to perform.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[savuporo]

Frankly, 10 seconds of my time spent on researching what google is doing at the moment is 10 seconds lost doing something useful.
I diagonal read, a lot, and do NOT consider this a crime. With information flows about everything interesting expanding i choose not always to spend those 10 seconds.
In this case, i guess my rant helped people, the picture is clearer to whoever cares to read the very first informative reply that i received.

Just as an aside, now it puzzles me how can google have an EULA on Chrome if its under sane open source licence ?

And yes, i spent more than a minute replying to your complaints about moderation ( about the most useful input you could ever have on site like ./ ? ) and lost those valuable seconds of my life. Hence, im not perfect. The old saying of the wise must be true, arguing over internet is like special olympics, no matter who wins, you are still retarded. Thank you for your attention.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[umeboshi]

and for the really, really impatient

svn co http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/chrome

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[chrwei]

they don't have to write a new one, they just have to take the EULA off the standard page template for google product and service downloads. as was already mentioned, chrome is BSD licensed and the the EULA is redundant and unenforceable since the license grants unrestricted use of the program including using it without a EULA.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[archkittens]

a browser is a product, not a service. chrome is a browser that integrates some services, such as gears and the rest. since those services are integrated into the browser, and you are using those services by using the browser, like it or not, the terms of the service agreement should be in the product license agreement.

i wish people would slow down and do some logical thinking instead of screaming "the sky is falling, and it is indexing webpages!"

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

No.

Semantic:
1: of or relating to meaning in language
2: of or relating to semantics

Semantics:
3a: the meaning or relationship of meanings of a sign or set of signs; especially: connotative meaning
b: the language used (as in advertising or political propaganda) to achieve a desired effect on an audience especially through the use of words with novel or dual meanings

Notice that semantic difference is dependent on the connotative meanings of words. They don't say "we own all your stuff" because technically they can't and it sounds really bad. So instead they say "you own all your stuff but we can do whatever the hell we please with it"... it means exactly the same thing as before, but it's legal that way. The whole point of "owning" something is precisely that you have the right to restrict who uses it and for what purposes. If you release that right, you've basically relinquished your ownership.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[sm62704]

Hmmmm, I believe you're right.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

Hmm. You raise some good questions.

What about any passwords that you may type?

Technically, since the terms include "submitting, posting or displaying", even though the password isn't displayed it's still being submitted/posted. This is probably illegal and I bet it wouldn't hold up in court... but then, who wants to go to court over something that should never have been in the first place?

What about the results of sites to you visit after typing in the password...like your bank?

Yeah, you caused it to be displayed... again, this is probably illegal — heck, as someone else pointed out, you don't even own the rights to that content so you can't possibly agree to sign the rights over to Google. This definitely wouldn't hold up in court, but again... stupid terms shouldn't exist, it shouldn't be necessary to go to court over them.

In fact, seeing as how some of the things that are claimed by the TOS are clearly illegal, you could probably go to court proactively and maybe even get the entire TOS overturned (IANAL, so maybe they would just overturn the parts that went too far... point 20.5 says only the parts that are invalid can be overturned). It'd sure be funny to see Google's reaction if a court determined that their TOS was illegal and declared it non-binding... they'd be scrambling to get a legal one written up, I suppose, but there would be a group of people who had basically received their software with no TOS.

As an amusing aside, I also discovered this:

8.1 You understand that all information (such as data files, written text, computer software, music, audio files or other sounds, photographs, videos or other images) which you may have access to as part of, or through your use of, the Services are the sole responsibility of the person from which such content originated. All such information is referred to below as the "Content".

Here they're explicitly saying that Content includes — perhaps exclusively refers to — content that belongs to others (anything you have access to as part of or through your use of the Services... arguably, you already have access to text/data created by yourself, so it wouldn't be accessed through the Services). Obviously if it belonged to someone else you'd be unable to agree to give those rights to Google. "Content which you submit" might be a null set if "Content" as defined excludes anything submitted by yourself, in which case section 11 in its entirety would be invalid.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

They AREN'T semantically equivalent. One statement says they "OWN" your stuff and the other says they can "USE" it. Legally speaking they're two entirely different things, but practically speaking there's not much different.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[clone53421]

*difference. There's not much difference. I need to proofread better.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[TuringTest]

Mostly to show up GPs bad orthography :-)

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[mr_mischief]

Well, I can't say that erring on the side of caution is a bad thing. If you're going to err just a bit towards caution or recklessness, caution is often the better way to go.

I'm not accusing anyone of this in this particular instance, but some people try to be so cautious that they become harmful themselves. Think about drivers on a freeway. Going too slow is often more dangerous than speeding a bit, leaving too big a gap in front of you just fits another car with someone careless driving it, and being too quick on the brakes can cause an accident while using them more steadily could have still avoided the original threat.

Any license of this length from a company the size of Google deserves a cautious eye. After all, they have many more lawyers than I do. I'm not even saying I like the license. I just think that it's not as bad as people are making it seem.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[lennier]

I remember when Symantec meant 'natural language query database company', not 'the people who bought Peter Norton'.

Ah Q&A, how I miss you. You might have been a wonky little DOS-based thing with less power than dBASE II... but it was the smell of the late '80s, before the AI winter.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[frakincylon]

The term "displaying" is also particularly disturbing. Could this be interpreted to mean that any web page that you visit (including those specifically banned to robots) could be used by Google however they need to in order to bring about the Googlepocolypse? Have I sold my soul by trying it out? This could explain that flaming eye that kept looking at me from the second O in Google when I used it. "Do no evil", that's exactly what an evil company would say!

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[frakincylon]

Additionally, does this unlimited license allow big brother to sell what you submit, post, or view for profit? Step 1, steal underwear, step 2, evil EULA, step 3, profit!

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[ceoyoyo]

Ah, got it.

It's a little less clear if you're posting to someone else's blog, if there's a notice that you agree to transfer the copyright to them. That style of "agreement" hasn't been tested.

Of course, for an unmoderated blog you'd have to be insane to try and take ownership of random commenters' comments. If you did, you'd likely be held responsible for them. That's likely why Slashdot explicitly states they do not have any ownership.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[ceoyoyo]

It's also illegal to contract with someone to vote a particular way. That's the only possible application of "performance rights" to voting I can think of.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[magus_melchior]

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.
It's probably a matter of priorities. For whatever reason, Taco and the other admins like what kdawson's doing, even if he'd be fired as an editor in a more traditional news publication... 15 years ago.

You know, actually sensationalism like kdawson's may simply be a sign of the times. Pity that slashdot's editors have to tweak and bend the truth to get attention.

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[MacroRex]

Replying to myself, it seems Google changed the section 11 of the EULA. It now reads

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

and that's it. Suddenoutbreakofcommonsense anyone?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Fri13]

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?

1.1 and 11.1 parts are saying that all what you download/upload/see trought chrome is Google's. But after 10.1 it seems that "Service" does not anymore mean software (chrome, google earth, picasa etc) but software is after it refered as "Software", so 11.1 is not valid for chrome, only for webpages and services.

Can someone check what 1.1, 10.1 and 11.1 mean?

Re:This is not Chrome-specific.

[Fri13]

"is Google's" = Google has royalty-free license to it.

Misread much?

[onlysolution]

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?

Re:Misread much?

[TheJasper]

I don't agree. One of the 'out-of-context-excerpts' is about google being able to update chrome in any way they want with any service they desire. If they were to put in a spell check service which checks everything you type, then all of a sudden everythign you type is google useable? I don't think it would come to that but the implications are there.

Re:Misread much?

[zby]

Right at the beginning of the EULA you have definition of the word Service - as it is used in that document:

Google Chrome Terms of Service

These Terms of Service apply to the executable code version of Google Chrome. Source code for Google Chrome is available free of charge under open source software license agreements at http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html.

1. Your relationship with Google

1.1 Your use of Googleâ(TM)s products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the âoeServicesâ in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Google.

So when in the point 9.1. they use the word 'Service' it clearly means: "products, software, services and web sites" and that includes Chrome.

Re:Misread much?

[Ioldanach]

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?

No, they define "Services" in 1.1:

Google's products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the "Services" in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement)

By the definition, Chrome is included in "Services"

Re:Misread much?

[TheSpoom]

No. You don't understand that this is a contract and as such, is subject to the definitions placed in the contract. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure I could define "Fuzzy Bunny" in the definitions section and use it throughout and it would be as legally binding, which is to say, very.

I didn't think this is what they meant in the EULA either but I just read it through, and this is clearly what they meant.

Anything you post, and arguably, anything you see that you own the copyright for, in Chrome, is irrevocably licensed to Google, and they could sell licenses to their own version of it, or give it away, or modify it, or...

Re:Misread much?

[ergo98]

1.1 specifically defines services as including the use of Google products. That is the definition that carries for all further uses of the term services.

Re:Misread much?

[mr_mischief]

"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."

How is showing someone else your typos going to help them promote or display their services?

Re:Misread much?

[Xiaoxiaofreak2]

Yeah, the OP is pretty flawed. I know this "news" was posted in MANY other places as well, but here's where copypasta news and blog entries have their flaws. If you read section 9.4 closely, you'll see what I mean: 9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content That "limited license" it refers to is what has exploded onto the internet as a violation of rights, privacy, etc. Again, if you actually read section 11, you'll see that the limited license is only for the promotion of Chrome, and this only holds to things that aren't already covered under other rights, such as copyright or intellectual property. Basically, this boils down to: Google can use anything that is online to promote itself, if one of it's users accesses that site. Which, in all honesty, it could do anyway. This doesn't violate anything. And if you're still scared of it use Chromium, which has been stated by many others.

Re:Misread much?

[clone53421]

Well, as other people pointed out, your browser gets tied to your Google account. What if they start an advertising campaign for their new spell check feature? Complete with examples of poorly-written posts that would have been corrected by their new spell check feature? What if they quoted it without your permission and attributed it to you? What if they referenced your Google ID as the person who said that?

It'd be incredibly stupid, yes, and I don't think they'd think of doing such a thing because it'd be a sure loss in court (I hope). But the EULA says they can do it.

Re:Misread much?

[HiThere]

I don't think it would be more of a "sure loss in court" than, possibly, a court ordering them "don't do that anymore in this jurisdiction". Any stricter punishment would surprise me.

Mind you, ANY court case would be bad PR, but probably no worse than this /. page (and it's analogues on other sites).

Re:Misread much?

[clone53421]

If Google launched a new ad campaign illustrating how their new spell check feature would have improved /. user "HiThere"'s posts, I certainly hope they'd lose in court. Even if nothing more happened than "stop using that material and don't do that again", they'd better lose. Just because they lose doesn't mean there's necessarily a strict punishment, but I'd expect that you'd at least be able to sue to recoup your legal costs.

Use Chromium

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you use the OpenSource version of Chrome , which is BSD licensed and has no EULA you need to agree to.

I think they made this separation of Chrome and Chromium to keep the "Chrome" brand under their control while still making the browser open source.

Builds:
http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/

Info:
http://www.chromium.org

Re:Use Chromium

[centuren]

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.

Re:Use Chromium

[sd.fhasldff]

Considering the MASSIVE javascript speed improvements Mozilla have achieved using "hotpath" techniques, I think it's unlikely (these improvements are not yet in stable release). On the other hand, the description of V8 from the Google Comic seem to indicate that they do something along the same lines, by dynamically compiling parts of the script to "machine code" (as they say). Without specifics, it's difficult to compare the approaches, though...

And, by the way, this optimizing is also why there is "IE32" and "ARM" specific code in Chrome. There has to be. That's integral to how hotpath-type techniques work.

Re:Use Chromium

[mdmkolbe]

Well anything would be faster than where they where as the fourth slowest language on the shootout. (Ok, not anything: Ruby, PHP, and Tcl.)

Re:Use Chromium

[John Hasler]

So we are back to coding in assembly for speed.

Re:Use Chromium

[maxume]

The javascript engine translates, where it makes sense, chunks of javascript into machine code for those architectures. I guess there is something pretty close to assembly somewhere in the engine, but it isn't something a web developer is going to need to think about.

Re:Use Chromium

[AnyoneEB]

And, by the way, this optimizing is also why there is "IE32" and "ARM" specific code in Chrome. There has to be. That's integral to how hotpath-type techniques work.

I thought that was what LLVM was for.

Re:Use Chromium

[mr_mischief]

It's a JIT compiler. There's nothing about assembly language anywhere near the concept. All your code is executing as machine language at some level, or it wouldn't execute at all. That doesn't mean it's written in assembly.

Re:Use Chromium

[jonaskoelker]

And, by the way, this optimizing is also why there is "IE32" and "ARM" specific code in Chrome.

I know Google has some clever coders, but I'm impressed beyond belief that they can get decent performance from a browser written to run on top of Internet Explorer version 3.2 ;)

(IE32 probably should be IA32, although ISTR it spelled IA-32 more often; for those not in the know, it's Intel Architecture, 32 bits, also commonly called x86).

Re:Use Chromium

[Jaysyn]

Just a heads up, Chromium doesn't like Windows 2000.

Re:Use Chromium

[John Hasler]

*Sigh*. I didn't say it was _literally_ assembly. It's the same sort of thinking as "Let's code the critical parts in assembly for speed". It hurts portability, but of course Google couldn't care less about that.

Re:Use Chromium

[juler]

Now available for download is Google Chrome web browser I also download this new browser

A turn off?

[hachiman]

Whilst the auto update feature sort of makes sense (if you discount a malicious user working out how to auto-update an installed copy with their own code), I detest ads, possibly in common with the rest of the world. Ok, it is their revenue, but it's bad enough seeing them on pages, but having them eve more targetted???

Oh yes, and the autoupdate program (googleupdate.exe) still executes at startup even after Chrome is uninstalled. I know it's a beta, but that's just sloppy.

Or is it???

Re:A turn off?

[bignetbuy]

It is sloppy. GoogleUpdate is called as a scheduled task on MS platforms. It claims that if Chrome is uninstalled, the scheduledtask will remove itself in "a few hours".

Still, not using Add/Remove programs like other well-behaved apps is just shady.

Re:A turn off?

[blind biker]

What's an easy way to remove that? I didn't uninstall Chrome, yet (no need, for now), but I'd like to know it's no big deal. I guess it isn't, but it doesn't hurt asking...

Re:A turn off?

[antirelic]

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).

Re:A turn off?

[pr0nbot]

Given that Google's business model revolves entirely around supplying users to advertisers, I think the chances of Chrome ever having an ad blocker to be roughly zero. My personal little conspiracy theory is that they don't want Firefox to entirely displace IE precisely because of ad blocking. They can't undo plugins in Firefox, so developing their own browser is the way to go.

Re:A turn off?

[secretcurse]

Isn't even more targeted a good thing? I mean, I hate advertising, but it's a fact of life. If I have to get ads, I'd rather get ads for shit that I might be interested in.

Re:A turn off?

[Galphanore]

Google updater doesn't remove it's self for the same reason any other independently running update program updater made by a large company doesn't, it updates more then just one app.

Re:A turn off?

[Kelbear]

It's open source. I think the chances of Chrome having an ad blocker approaches 1.

If they specifically block an extension that does ad-blocking what does that accomplish? Bad PR, and backlash in an already weak user base. Then all good aspects of Chrome will be siphoned off into another open source browser which will allow ad-blocking anyway.

Instead, if they allow ad-blocking, they keep their shot at supplanting IE in the marketplace and getting some consistent standards in the public which they can build other services for.

Re:A turn off?

[pr0nbot]

It's open source. I think the chances of Chrome having an ad blocker approaches 1.

My understanding is that Chrome is based on the open source Chromium, but I don't know they are the same thing; I'd imagined that Chrome would have some bits that aren't in Chromium (e.g. Google trademarks), and might disable some things that are. (Consider OS X vs Darwin.)

Google might decide not to accept ad blocking patches into the trunk. In theory that might trigger a fork, but the proportion of users using the fork would be about the same as the number of people who use Camino over Firefox, i.e. negligible.

Re:A turn off?

[Espectr0]

I just found this in the task scheduler:

Google Update Task keeps your Google software up to date. If Google Update Task is disabled or stopped, your Google software may not be kept up to date, meaning we can't fix security vulnerabilities that may arise, and features in your Google software may not work. Google Update Task uninstalls itself when there is no Google software using it. It may take a few hours for Google Update to detect it is time to uninstall.

So it indeed uninstalls itself, but takes time.

I'm more concerned about this part...

[Anonymous Coward]

12. Software updates 12.1 The Software that you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services.

Burying an agreement to have spyware installed on your machine deep within obscure legalese is not something I'd have expected of Google, and there seems to be no way to disable the associated googleupdate.exe process without registry hacking.

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[gogogadgetearl]

and there seems to be no way to disable the associated googleupdate.exe process without registry hacking.

Start > Run... > msconfig > Startup Tab > Uncheck GoogleUpdate

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[Darkon]

Start > Run... > msconfig > Startup Tab > Uncheck GoogleUpdate

While not quite registry hacking, I'd say this isn't too far removed. Most non-technical users won't have heard of 'msconfig'. A well-written application should have the option to disable autostart/autoupdating amongst its normal configuration settings.

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[clone53421]

Firefox and IE update themselves too. This isn't spyware... spyware would be if they were transmitting data about me back to Google.

Now if you're irritated because they installed the service without asking and there's no way to disable the auto-update feature, then you have a point. However it still doesn't make it spyware.

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[Surye]

Naw, if you read it right, it won't be installing completely new software, just allowing them to autoupdate and extend chrome. There's nothing new here any other updating software does.

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[tknd]

Burying an agreement to have spyware installed on your machine deep within obscure legalese is not something I'd have expected of Google

While they aren't installing spyware do you really think that the largest US web advertising firm is not spying on you?

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[clone53421]

Real, Adobe, Office, Java, Quicktime, and heck even your operating system (be it Windows, Linux, or Apple), also use background updater services (IIRC). Some of them at least let you opt out and/or review what's downloaded and installed, which is definitely good. WinZip has a quick launch tray application that runs when your computer starts, though it does give you an option to not use when you install. AIM, MSN, and Y!Messenger like to run when Windows starts. I'm sure I'm forgetting things here, too. It's not like this is new.

Don't get me wrong, I hate useless background services with a passion. (Notice how I rattled off a whole list of them?) It still doesn't make this "spyware".

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[clone53421]

Oh please. You can't seriously argue that auto updates constitute "spyware".

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[clone53421]

That's exactly the point, though: unless you have information I don't, it does NOT tell what sites I browsed. Yes, you could tell that I turned my computer on and that I had Google's software installed, but you could make that same argument against ANY software package containing an auto-update feature... and there are plenty of them. And your argument about sending information on "lack of updates" is just dumb... the whole purpose of the background service is to KEEP THE SOFTWARE UPDATED. I suppose in addition to checking to see if you've updated Windows and Microsoft Office recently, you also think it installs a keylogger and sniffs your passwords and credit card number and sends those too?

"Anonymous usage statistics" doesn't include sites visited, it indicates things like which settings I've enabled, etc. (Again, if you have information I don't, please feel free to share.) Plenty of other software packages have the exact same thing. Google just wants to know what options are popular — and the usage statistics can be disabled anyway. I usually do, for that matter; it's not criminal of them, though, unless they're doing something more nefarious than what's typically involved in sending back "anonymous usage statistics".

Re:I'm more concerned about this part...

[joeljkp]

You can also do it in a user-friendly way with Microsoft Defender. This is built in to Vista, and shows up as a "Control Start-up Programs" item in the Control Panel.

You're right though, an application option would be even better.

adj: Unconscionable

[jackb_guppy]

Google lawyers may need to learn a new word that ATT was just taught... Unconscionable

Re:adj: Unconscionable

[beav007]

TFA = The Failing Article

Re:adj: Unconscionable

[mcvos]

You may need to learn a new phrase that Google's lawyers already know perfectly well ... "TFA has nothing whatsoever to do with Chrome".

Here are the actual terms and conditions associated with Chrome,

Those are the terms to Chromium, not Chrome.

I think those terms and the license are the only difference between the two.

Re:adj: Unconscionable

[clone53421]

Those are the terms to Chromium, the open-source code for Chrome. The binary distributable does include the text quoted in TFA: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html.

To hit a few good points:

1.1 Your use of Google's products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the "Services" in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Google.

[...]

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. 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.

11.2 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.

In other words, the browser is considered part of Google's "Services", and they can use anything you create for anything they want (although you "own" the content, for what that's worth) — and even share it with third party companies if they want.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Prepare to be even less impressed and look at the V8 src, they only have codegen for ia32 and arm. Plenty of hardcoded platform specific (windows) guff in the browser codebase too.

This stuff might have been acceptable in 2003 but it's -DEPIC_FAIL for 2008.

So far so good.

[Blimey85]

I'm using it right now just to try it out. I'm a huge Firefox fan and have been for several years now. I started using Firefox back when it was just a beta, long before version 1 finally hit. As a web programmer I think I use Firefox more than any other program and I've really come to like it. It does have a few issues that I'd like to see resolved however, and I think Chrome might be going in the right direction. Memory usage in Firefox is nuts and always has been. After browsing for a couple of hours I can close all tabs and still use nearly 400 megs of memory. That's a serious problem. Sure I can restart Firefox at that point and get the memory back, but I shouldn't need to. Also, when Firefox is using more than 300 megs on my machine, it starts to slow down. I had a gig and a half in my computer so I thought maybe I needed more. I bought another gig and brought my total to 2.5 gigs, yet Firefox still begins to crap out around the 300 meg threshold.

From the comic it seems like Google really wants to take a new approach to how browsers deal with memory and I think Firefox could learn from that. Is that enough to make me switch? No, not at all. I rely on a number of Firefox extensions and unless Google makes Chrome compatible with Firefox extensions, or comes up with their own system and then develops a tool to auto-port Firefox extensions, I don't think a lot of people are going to switch. Back when I was running 1.5.3 (I think it was .3) and had a number of stability issues I might have given Chrome serious consideration but I only installed it tonight to see what it's all about. When I'm done playing it's back to Firefox I go.

Re:So far so good.

[BBFire]

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..

Re:So far so good.

[houghi]

After browsing for a couple of hours I can close all tabs and still use nearly 400 megs of memory. That's a serious problem.

I do not know what OS you run, but on Linux this is a question that often pops up: "I have nothing running and have xyzMB in memory in use.

The answer obviously is: because you have xyz+abcMB you have available.
I have 8GB in my machine an it uses a serious part of it. That is what it is for. That is why I bought it. It doesn't slow down anything if it isn't used.

This doesn't mean that there is no problem with Firefox, because there is.

Re:So far so good.

[doooooosh]

Amen to this. The internet was reborn for me when I installed Flashblock and AdBlock (though, admittedly, it's hard to reasonably expect a company that gets its revenue from ads to help you block them).

Not including smooth scrolling is just another gross oversight.

Re:So far so good.

[KasperMeerts]

You don't need AdBlock, just edit your hosts file. It disables just about every ad on every site I know.

Re:So far so good.

[xaxa]

Adding to that: Linux caches disc/network files in memory until the memory is needed (or until the file is deleted). Running 'top' shows how much space is taken up with cached files. You can drop the cache with echo 1 >> /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches (it's safe to do, but will slow down your computer as everything needs to be read from disc again).

Re:So far so good.

[Smivs]

I used Firefox for years and still do to an extent, but a couple of years ago I 'saw the light' and moved to Opera as my default browser. It does everything I need it to, quickly and securely, it takes up much less screen real-estate, and is very customisable. It's occassionaly caught out by sites 'optimised' for I.E. (but what isn't?) but otherwise is brilliant.

Re:So far so good.

[mako1138]

For now, I'm just leaving my Gmail open in Chrome. Gmail tends to junk up Firefox after awhile, anyway.

Re:So far so good.

[roaddemon]

Not sure how this got flagged as a troll. Wish I had modpoints left.

Re:So far so good.

[Vectronic]

Huh, I've never been a fan of smooth scrolling, I disable it everywhere, OS, per-application, anything that allows me...

But, after reading your post, I fired up Chrome again, and noticed that it doesnt have the mouse-wheel scroll thing (press down on mouse wheel, drag up/down/left/right/45degree[Opera]) which is what I use if I want consistent/continuous scrolling.

Definitely an oversight (currently) its very useful for long pages, or pdfs, etc where you can just "set and forget" and read as it scrolls along.

Re:So far so good.

[gbjbaanb]

though to be fair, Adblock is best used if the ads are downloaded but not displayed - that way the site gets the revenue, and you automatically get to ignore the ads.

Re:So far so good.

[Vectronic]

There are benifits to using your HOSTS file though... such as it works for any browser, or internet related thing, like Shareware/Adware, browsers within some applications, or software/scripts that might otherwise call the site outside of your web browser, the same as a decent Firewall would do, but without having to run extra apps.

Re:So far so good.

[maxume]

My impression is that as of 2.0something and 3.0, the biggest memory hogs in Firefox are flash and Java. Firefox still leaks, but nowhere near as bad (I have had a window open for ~11 hours and it is using less than 250 MB of Virtual memory and less than 90 MB of actual memory, this is vastly better than early 2.0 releases).

The Flashblock extension seems to reduce memory use quite a bit, and with all the poorly done flash adds that peg to 100% cpu, it cuts down on fan noise.

Re:So far so good.

[Vectronic]

Because he said he prefers IE over Firefox/Opera/Safari/his bedroom window...

However, he is right, although I dont find Firefox's text rendering that bad, Chrome's is noticable.

Although I prefer Opera's, it also depends largely on the font, for instance Slashdot, Opera (to me) is eaier on the eyes than Firefox which is easier than Chrome...

But on Wikipedia, Chrome is easier than Firefox (Opera is still prefered)

But that also could just a per-person/amount of usage thing...

Re:So far so good.

[RegularFry]

I give it a week before there's an AdBlock port of some sort. It's just too juicy a target.

Re:So far so good.

[ergo98]

From the comic it seems like Google really wants to take a new approach to how browsers deal with memory and I think Firefox could learn from that.

New, but also very old. In the nascent web, browsing multiple sites meant opening multiple, process-isolated instances of the browser.

While coalescing their presentation into tabs is novel, the separation was actually where we started. The "single instance many pages" model was pursued to conserve resources.

Re:So far so good.

[mr_mischief]

There are drawbacks, too. Install a web server that listens to 127.0.0.1 and take a look at your logs after a week or two of browsing with every advertisement server and malicious host on the Net mapped to that address.

Re:So far so good.

[mr_mischief]

You can change the default font. It won't necessarily help for pages that use their own fonts, but it will help in many cases.

Re:So far so good.

[Anonymous Coward]

though to be fair, Adblock is best used if the ads are downloaded but not displayed - that way the site gets the revenue, and you automatically get to ignore the ads.

a) I am on dial-up half the time. Downloading the ads is most of the problem. More so, ad content may exceed actual content by a factor of 100:1 (consider that without blocks in place, plug-ins would preced the flash ad itself).

b) If it doesn't slow you down or your coworkers over a shared LAN, then it may increase bandwidth costs or cause a cap to be hit

c) Website operators that push the wrong type of ad should not be rewarded. Should operator A be rewarded ten times more than operator B just because they put ten times as many ads on their site? Small sites with some text ads or sponsors are typically OK and won't be automatically blocked. Get in bed with Doubleclick (or Google now that they are the same), then fuck 'em.

d) What you suggest is click fraud - more or less - and is definitely inteded to defraud the advertisers. Sure, I think marketers should rot in hell. That does not mean I want to be the one picking their pockets.

e> That you preface your comments with "to be fair" suggests you have not given the matter much thought.

Re:So far so good.

[Rakishi]

From the comic it seems like Google really wants to take a new approach to how browsers deal with memory and I think Firefox could learn from that.

Not really a new idea except in the sense that google didn't have any pre-existing code to rebuild. In fact I believe IE8 does the same thing and has been out in beta form before Chrome. I'm sure you can also find FF related suggestions to do this going back years if not much longer. The problem is that the FF source code is such an abysmal mess that rewriting it to this extent would require a minor miracle. It'd probably also break many extensions, cause tons of bugs and so on.

Re:So far so good.

[mortonda]

I agree, without adblock, firebug, and web developer extensions, I really have no use for it.

Re:So far so good.

[HigH5]

Judging by the simplicity of the browser I think Google is after Internet Explorer, not after Firefox.

Re:So far so good.

[Kalriath]

No site that actually cares about your one page view because they need it, will ever get paid until you click the ad. You're not helping them.

Re:It wont even install for me

[BeNJ-GoS]

Works fine for me, including import of everything from FF3 and the Options menu using XP64... (Not impressed at the moment compared to FF3)

LGPL?

[bcmm]

Chrome uses WebKit, which is based on the LGPL'ed software KHTML. Shouldn't this make it harder to put weird restrictions on usage?

Re:LGPL?

[pipatron]

No. If it was GPL instead of LPGL it would be harder. LGPL is designed to let companies use and abuse the code. GPL is designed to force companies to give the user the same freedom that the company used when they first downloaded the code.

There are pros and cons with both of these approaches.

Re:Great License Agreement

[nicolastheadept]

If you don't like the EULA, then compile it yourself from the source
http://code.google.com/chromium/

jumping to conclusions

[speedtux]

I think you're jumping to conclusions; that is Google's usual "content license", and something they need in order to offer services to you. I don't know how you think it applies to the browser. If you're trying to imply that Google is attempting to claim that everything you do with Chrome belongs to them, you're wrong.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[stupidflanders]

No, this is jumping to conclusions.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[houghi]

It applies to the browser if you have the option to send usage stats and crash reports automatically. This means that they will get the sites you go to will be known.

Whether or not this is something to be afraid of is another matter. Basically it is a 'phone home' sort of device.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

The license is called "Google Chrome Terms of Service" which "apply to the executable code version of Google Chrome". It differs from Google's generic terms in at least para 1.2 (open source licenses may over-rule it). In 1.1 it applies to your use of Google's "Services", which means: "products, software, services and web sites", not content: services and web sites are included but software clearly is too. The license applies to the executable code, so presumably we would need explicit words to indicate when a part of it does not apply to that software. 11.1 applies to "Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services". "By submitting, posting or displaying" this content, you grant Google their open-ended license. Why would a free-standing (it runs without IP connectivity) web browser software license need content license terms applicable to unrelated Google online services? Their intentions are not clear, the drafting is opaque. The plain words of the license do appear to give Google the license people are concerned about. If this is not what they mean they should offer a software license, not imply that by using it you are buying into the whole Google suite and package.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[Snaller]

"I think you're jumping to conclusions; that is Google's usual "content license", and something they need in order to offer services to you."

Why do they NEED it?

"I don't know how you think it applies to the browser. "

Because you fucking have to agree to it before you can download the browser!

Re:jumping to conclusions

[RegularFry]

This is +5? Please, read the EULA. Even if this is just Google's usual "content license", it's over-broad; the "Services" are defined so as to include Chrome, whether intentionally or not. At least, that's my reading.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[clone53421]

I especially like "loose one turn". Somebody's head must be screwed on too tightly.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[mr_mischief]

It is an option. You can enable or disable that at any time.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[HiThere]

And this conclusion is based on what reasoning, precisely?

I'll agree that a good lawyer could probably argue that a contract allowing Google to claim that everything you do with Chrome would be unconscionable. That's different from arguing that the contract doesn't claim that. It's also quite expensive, and has a high failure rate.

I'll also agree that it's possible that the contract isn't making that claim. But IANAL, so I can't be sure, and that's what it looks like to me.

If you want to claim that this reading is incorrect, it would be desirable to specify WHY you believe this reading is incorrect. Otherwise I feel my caution will shape my actions more than does your confidence. And I feel that this is the correct action on my part.

P.S.: I also look on Google with considerably less favor than I did before I encountered this EULA, and I can't even use the browser, as it's MSWind only.

P.P.S.: I'm aware that there's a branch of this software that is BSD licensed. This partially mitigates my attitude towards Google for this escapade, but only partially. I'm starting to think of Google as a Fool-Killer.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[speedtux]

You mean just like crash reporting on Macintosh, Windows, Linux, the iPhone, and dozens of other platforms?

Re:jumping to conclusions

[speedtux]

Why do they NEED it?

Because most of Google's services involve storing your data, and they can only do that if you give them permission to do it.

Because you fucking have to agree to it before you can download the browser!

That doesn't mean it applies to the browser, it may simply apply to Google services connected with use of the browser.

Re:jumping to conclusions

[Snaller]

"That doesn't mean it applies to the browser, it may simply apply to Google services connected with use of the browser"

In court what would hold up is what you "agreed" to when you downloaded it.

guff?

[stupidflanders]

I think... I think he's trying to communicate with us, but I can't quite make out what he's saying.

Re:guff?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think... I think he's trying to communicate with us, but I can't quite make out what he's saying.

Please do feel free to look up any short, monosyllabic, four letter words that are above your level of reading comprehension.

"Growser" is currently Windows only. It's got hard coded registry access and other such retardation throughout the code. Where you might think lib/ the chromium developers think chrome_dll/ and so on.

Re:guff?

[lanswitch]

It's language, Jim, but not as we know it.

Re:guff?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... you're making fun of him based on your own ignorance?

Re:guff?

[iapetus]

If you were using Chrome, you'd just have typed 'guff' into your Omnibox and found a definition. Is it really that hard to use a search engine before boasting about your own ignorance?

Re:guff?

[canUbeleiveIT]

It was a light-hearted joke...relax.

Re:guff?

[everett]

Wow, what do you have against the Swedes man? That looks much more like your native tongue of foot in mouth to me.

Re:guff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop these dictionary attacks on us feeble minded!

Re:guff?

[vimm]

Do you have throat cancer?

Re:guff?

[ChrisA90278]

What he's saying is that is appears to be written by some low-skill windows only programmers. That is the problem with open source. The whole world will see your work and judge you by it. Appearently this was written by some people who didn't know there was a world other then Windows on a PC.

I bet you can't read your doctor's prescription slips either. Every indutry has it's own set of terminology.

Re:guff?

[ginbot462]

Forget guff. The other sentences aren't exactly James Joyce.

forget the fine print - it's phones home like mad

[Anonymous Coward]

This thing is lighting up my firewall constantly, during install, operation and uninstall.

Even after uninstall it leaves GoogleUpdate.exe installed and running and pinging google every hour.

I'm sticking with Firefox 3.1's javascript compiler instead:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

Scary

[Candid88]

Yikes, that is one scary EULA.

I can never understand why so many people are paranoid about giving even the smallest scraps of information to the government yet will happily let companies like Google (world leaders in data-mining and info extraction) have unrestricted access to all their most private data.

Whilst I join most people in laughing at those who foresee government putting barcodes on our foreheads etc., I really doubt it's long before we start seeing a 'Gcode' on people.

Wake up everyone, this is where the real frightening privacy infringements are taking place!

Re:Scary

[CrackedButter]

The difference being, we can bring down governments with just Tea. With corporations we have to use lawyers, I know which I would prefer to use in a fight.

Re:Scary

[thetoadwarrior]

Maybe because Google just uses the info to allow you to customise things and target ads towards you which is actually beneficial to you.

Where as the government will use it to hunt you down, probably send you to Iraq and tax you to death. I'd trust my data with most companies long before I'd trust the government.

They're already running trials of RFID tags in people. If you think the government will use that for your benefit then you're having a laugh.

Re:Scary

[Candid88]

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.

Re:Scary

[swordgeek]

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.

Re:Scary

[Candid88]

Um, which western government exactly doesn't hold elections anymore?

Re:Scary

[pipatron]

can never understand why so many people are paranoid about giving even the smallest scraps of information to the government yet will happily let companies like Google (world leaders in data-mining and info extraction) have unrestricted access to all their most private data.

Because I can choose to avoid Google. I can not choose to avoid my government.

Re:Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is a strange place. People here want freedom from the goverment and have this idea in the back of their heads of some sort of Matrix style world springing up anyday.

I remember when I moved here from Russia 5 years ago and mortage, loan, cell-phone, health insurance etc. In many ways I felt far less "free" than when living under communism (if I didn't pay $x every month I would be locked up and left to rot!).

We pride ourselves on "freedom" form the goverment but our Corporation's on the other hand impose some of the most oppressive rules on customers than anywhere in the world.

Very few places in the world can a company sue you just for quiting your job. Very few places in the world can companies dictate exactly how you can live your life or else you don't receive basic healthcare. It's a strange, strange place.

Re:Scary

[thetoadwarrior]

The odds of Google fading away like Yahoo or Alta Vista are quite high. The odds of the US government just fading away are what?

So what if the government tells you that they're tapping your phones and tagging people. Nothing is being done about it and in fact the guy most likely to continue these things (McCain) has a good chance of winning the election.

Google has already change it's ways to suit what the market has said (ie blurring faces on street view) and the only change the government has taken was it's stolen more freedom away from people. It's not exactly hard to figure out who's the lesser of two evils.

Re:Scary

[Candid88]

Your using selective examples.

There are many other examples of companies doing "evil". Right now our economy is going down the hole largely because the gas companies hold us to ransom everytime we fill up. Supply & Demand has nothing to do with it, they do it "because they can".

A few years ago, ford decided not to recall their faulty Explorer's and instead face lawsuits from the families of dead victims because it was cheaper then ordering a recall, how is that not "evil"?

Microsoft charge massive fee's for faulty software "because they can". Even google's sheet isn't completely clean, as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google shows. They may have started blurring people's faces, but ask to have your house and backyard taken off google earth and they'll tell you to get stuffed.

Google is now a publicly listed company, meaning anyone with even the most malign motives can purchase a say in the company.

Both government and companies can be equally "evil". It's extremely foolish to assume otherwise.

Re:Scary

[itsdapead]

Yikes, that is one scary EULA.

First, its pretty obvious that the quote pertains to some web-based service ("the services") offered by Google, not the browser itself.

Second, thanks to a broken copyright system designed for hand-engraved plates and player pianos and cast in stone by international treaties, that list of rights is pretty much what a webmaster needs simply to put your material on teh interweb - especially in countries that don't have the same "fair use" rules as the US.

Re:Scary

[shaka]

Which EULA would that be? The one linked in the article? Oh wait, the article doesn't actually link to any EULA.

Chrome's "EULA" may be found here. It consists principally of this sentence:

The Chromium software and sample code developed by Google is licensed under the BSD license.

No, that's the terms for Chromium. You seem to have it confused between Chrome, the product, and Chromium, the open-source browser project.

The EULA for Chrome, however, is available here.

Re:Scary

[Neoprofin]

I would like to stroke my ego for the record. In the story announcing Chrome I tried to tell people that this is how Google functions and that just because something is open source doesn't mean that it isn't calling home, that's simply what Google does. I was told flat out that obvious that's not the case, "it's open source, duh!" obviously with that many people looking at the code someone would notice. I'm sure they did notice, doesn't change the fact that it's there.

Well score two for me:
1) It's watching.
2) People are already say taking the apologist attitude that it's fine that they're watching because they're only using it for marketing not for evil.

Re:Scary

[mcvos]

Um, which western government exactly doesn't hold elections anymore?

Some have become travesties. Does that count?

Re:Scary

[mcvos]

TVery few places in the world can a company sue you just for quiting your job.

It's still an improvement compared to the time when slaves who quit their job were hunted down with dogs.

(Yes, I'm aware this joke is going to cost me karma.)

Re:Scary

[Silicon Jedi]

I'm not certain the U.S. Presidency is properly an election any more.

Re:Scary

[mr_mischief]

Considering Google limits its use of the data it collects to "the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services", I'd say that's pretty much what it means.

Re:Scary

[joranbelar]

What exactly are you afraid of them using this information for? I am genuinely curious because I was under the impression most privacy advocates are more concerned about the "principle" of not sharing your information rather than having genuine fear of some vague, ominous portent of doom because Google knows which links you like to click on.

Re:Scary

[ceoyoyo]

A while ago someone made the comment that he'd love to see the data Google collected during the loooooong invitation only GMail rollout. Google knows, for a good proportion of the population, who knows who.

Re:Great License Agreement

[thetoadwarrior]

Replace the g with a $ and show them how you really feel!

But but but

[David Gerard]

But they're not evil! They said so! So it must be all right then.

Guck Foogle

[asackett]

Google is a commercial enterprise... 'nuff sed.

Re:Guck Foogle

[ILuvSP]

Google is a commercial enterprise... 'nuff sed.

To elaborate...Google is an advertising and marketing company!! Everything they do, is directed towards knowing the consumer. This EULA is genius...and so is this product (the browser). What better way is there of harvesting consumer information? Create a browser, say you have royalty-free license to everything that goes through said browser. This is a like striking gold for an advertising company. It is essentially spyware, only made by Google so it's good...right?

Re:Guck Foogle

[Icarium]

You don't say. I guess you live off the land, or have a huge inheritance to live off of?

Whats that, you work for a living? You actually provide goods and services for a price, hoping to exceed your cost of living? You evil EVIL person!

Off topic (or more so): Isn't it ironic that when a company whos main revenue stream is from advertising releases a browser, the most widely requested feature being asked for is the ability to block adverts?

Which brings up another thought: If Google were to oblige and add ad blocking to Chrome that doesn't block thier own ads, wouldn't they run afoul of a whole host of laws against anti competitive behaviour?

Re:Guck Foogle

[fmobus]

well, if someone comes with a non-official patch or plugin for that, noone could blame Google.

Re:Guck Foogle

[asackett]

It pains me to have to point out that you have misconstrued the point I was making.

Boilerplate TOS

[speakerbomb]

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).

Re:Boilerplate TOS

[Spad]

you'd think Google would have a crack legal team banging one out before Chrome's release

Sounds like a fun job...

Re:Boilerplate TOS

[clone53421]

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"?

• Google Search
• Google Cache
• Google Translate
• Google News
• Etc. etc. etc.

dominiation

[hbshbs]

saying that every information we upload using this software may be used by google means they have to log this data somewhere. and they do ask if you want to send information about the use of the browser but you can refuse. i do believe that they wouldn't collect information using the browser itself since it's a complicated task that will consume alot of web traffic and space. as already said they have much better ways doing so with their other web applications, all the chrome idea is to make ppl trust the web applications better, and make it easier to use hence more ppl use the google web apps ---> more info on google servers ---> more info google can use to do what the hell they want with... p/s/ it is a demonic eula... worst than a mortgage one.

Re:Google sniffing your clicks

[bignetbuy]

"A screenshot for the happy few not having access to MS Windows machines would be nice ;-)"

Fixed your typo...

huh?

[nrgins]

That doesn't even make sense. I'm agreeing to allow them to use what I VIEW in the browser? The browser is for viewing, not uploading. Something's not right.

Re:huh?

[pipatron]

Just press "Cancel". You'll get the download anyway.

Re:huh?

[nrgins]

your reply doesn't make sense either.

Re:huh?

[ljuwaidah]

Yes, but it also says: 2.2 You can accept the Terms by: (A) clicking to accept or agree to the Terms, where this option is made available to you by Google in the user interface for any Service; or (B) by actually using the Services. In this case, you understand and agree that Google will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the Terms from that point onwards.

Re:huh?

[clone53421]

Which part confused you, "press Cancel" or "get the download"?

Ok, being fair, probably the latter, so I'll briefly explain how it works: you download an installer stub (gawd, I hate those, you have to be on the internet to install it). You run the stub, which asks you to accept the TOS. You accept, and the stub downloads and executes the actual setup. Apparently, if you click "Cancel" on the TOS, it still downloads and runs the setup, so it's not really necessary to accept the TOS.

Now, the question is, does it actually record whether or not you accept the TOS? Because if it doesn't, they either (1) have an open-ended assumption that you accepted it or (2) can't enforce it on ANYONE because they could have pressed "Cancel" and there's no way of proving which they clicked. IANAL, but I'm betting that either of those could be convincingly argued to a jury.

Re:huh?

[mr_mischief]

Ever heard of HTTP POST? When you post a node on Slashdot, send email through webmail, or search something on a search engine you're uploading information to a server. If you post to YouTube or Flickr, or you attach a file to an email through a webmail interface, you're uploading a file in the more narrow sense.

Googolomania

[sciop101]

Google: "We can coexist, but only on my terms. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die."

Skynet has been launched...

[datalife]

All your (data)base are belong to us.

I AM SO HAPPY!

[hyperz69]

This is totally awesome and fair! This is the best thing to happen on the internet! GOOGLE IS THE BEST COMPANY EVER!

"Posted with Chrome, edited for content by Google"

Unfortunately not

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the LGPL only applies to the library itself.

Since you can take the library and use it under another application which doesn't have this EULA, the LGPL is bypassed.

One reason why the readline libraries are GPL. The authors don't want to help someone who doesn't want to help their customers.

"It's been 35 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"

Re:Unfortunately not

[andy.ruddock]

But both GPL and LGPL only cover distribution of the source code - neither have any bearing upon what the finished product can (or can't) be used for. I know that GPL 3 includes restrictions on its use in certain circumstances, but I'm not sure hoe far reaching those restrictions can be made with respect to finished product.

Re:Great License Agreement

[pipatron]

Or just press "cancel" at the EULA and get the download anyway, like I did.

Sheesh.....complain guys.....they DO listen

[Danathar]

1. BETA..Beta..BETA (although their use of "Beta" is a bit stretched I know).

2. Complain, email, Complain!! - Google DOES listen generally (they may not write back, but people do pay attention)

Re:Sheesh.....complain guys.....they DO listen

[Aladrin]

They listen when there's a major Slashdot posting that tells them how stupid they've been, too.

In fact, I'd guess the Slashdot posting would gather more attention than all the emails combined.

Re:Sheesh.....complain guys.....they DO listen

[greenfield]

1. BETA..Beta..BETA (although their use of "Beta" is a bit stretched I know).

If you discuss license agreements with a lawyer, I don't think saying, "This is a beta license agreement" will carry much weight. If you agree to a contract, you are agreeing to the contract, warts and all. It's also worth noting that services like Gmail are still in "beta."

2. Complain, email, Complain!! - Google DOES listen generally (they may not write back, but people do pay attention)

I posted a question on Google groups a week or so ago and have now sent two email messages about the TOS. No response on the Google group; no response to the email messages. As you point out, they may be paying attention, but it's a bit hard to tell, no?

No kids allowed either!

[Anonymous Coward]

2.3 You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if (a) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google, ...

Apparently kids are not allowed to use chrome.

Re:No kids allowed either!

[ceoyoyo]

Kids aren't allowed to bind themselves by the contract so the contract doesn't apply to them. Including the line about not being allowed to use Chrome.

Just find yourself a kid to install it for you. In fact, find yourself a kid to install ALL your software.

Re:No kids allowed either!

[novakreo]

Apparently kids are not allowed to use chrome.

You say that like it's a bad thing.
Hopefully they'll add a spelling and grammar proficiency requirement, too.

Evil?

[N8F8]

Sounds a little evil to me. Hope they fix it.

Google iPhone app

[yabos]

Has anyone read the EULA in the Google iPhone application? It also says you give up all your rights to let Google use your information for whatever purpose they want. The fact that it even has a EULA while just about every other app on the phone does not at least makes it stand out so that more people might actually read it. I installed it once but deleted it after reading the EULA.

Re:Google iPhone app

[andy.ruddock]

If that EULA was anything like this, then deleting the application makes no difference.
It's perpetual, irrevocable , (from the EULA), so you're still stuck with having agreed to it.

Re:Google iPhone app

[yabos]

Yes perhaps but if you're not using the app then they can't get any of your information.

It's not even for *all* Windows...

[Peet42]

I fired up my Linux box and went to the Chrome homepage. It said "Windows only".

So, I wired up my Windows 2000 box and went to the homepage. It now said "XP/Vista only".

Why couldn't they have said that on the Linux version? It would have saved me a frustrating fifteen minutes of crawling around plugging inn video cables.

smooth scrolling

[sd.fhasldff]

I've yet to see a browser pull off a decent smooth scrolling feature. I want to use it, but it just doesn't work very well... in that it just winds up making scrolling slower. But, I guess it's like all the kids that want fancy menu animations, whereas I just want the damn menu to open NOW. No, don't "slide" or "fade" open. Just OPEN. NOW!

Re:smooth scrolling

[Nicolay77]

I have always preferred Opera's smooth scrolling.

I can control it with the mouse to pixel accuracy.

However, YMMV and all that.

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[slashflood]

Preventing Paranoia: When does Google Chrome talk to Google.com?. Please read it carefully.

there was one other company

[nimbius]

that had this sort of eula. they applied it to everything

i think it was"we are the borg..."

i dont think this is a sign of world domination, just a company thats conveniently lawyered to the
hilt in light of the fact theyre challenging a microsoft cashcow.
we might need to see that the lawyers sit a little closer to the back of the bus next time, google. your an internet information company, and yes people are reading.

stop spying on me

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet America, Google Chrome surfs you!

Re:stop spying on me

[magus_melchior]

"Chrome Googles YOU!" would've been more apropos...

Re:stop spying on me

[magus_melchior]

Or "Google Chromes YOU!" for the privacy nuts out there.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Goaway]

Damn them for not making their codebase absolutely perfect from day one! Software should spring into life fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' forehead!

Re:It wont even install for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked fine for me on XP x64. Probably something wrong with your system.

That said, I uninstalled it immediately due to some big annoyances:

1) I could not find a download for a local installer, instead it forces you to download an installer stub that downloads and installs the browser.

2) It did not let me choose where to install it. Instead it automatically installed into documents and settings\user\local settings\application data\google without so much as a prompt.

3) It added a "Google updater" to my startup programs without asking me if that was ok or even telling me about it.

4) When I uninstalled it, it didn't remove all of its files and didn't even clean out the startup entry for the aforementioned updater. I had to remove those things manually.

Sorry Google, I don't like it when software tries to take control away from me and doesn't notify me of system changes. These are the kinds of things that will keep me far away from Chrome.

Translation..

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

All your crap are ours (forever)

Re:It wont even install for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations - you just set the Slashdot record for the least comprehensible post ever.

Re:It wont even install for me

[PopeRatzo]

Prepare to be even less impressed and look at the V8 src

Gosh, you would think this was beta software or something.

I want my money back.

Chrome is pretty, but Firefox is a performer!

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Firefox out performs Chrome. I did some testing last night and i found it histerical that firefox scrolls gmail better, than Google's Chrome :)

Firefox is just a better browser. Chrome is pretty, i like the tabs on top but its just not ready. If it doesnt have any extensions like firefox, it will never be taken seriously.

Adblock Plus is a MUST have feature for all web users. Mouse Gestures are essential to my browsing habits.

Firefox is faster, and is more focused on freedom. Google wants your ad dollars, so expect it to be THE SPAM browser.

I'm concerned that it may have doubleclick stuff built in. Will google track EVERYTHIGN i do now? I get a free browser so Google can spy on me and make money? FireFox does this with a little more dignity.

Its cute, but under the hood... i smell SPAM land. I wouldnt be suprised if they tried to change the entire way advertising and user habits are user tracked. Google has something up their sleave, and its all about making money through ad revenue.

I cant trust that they have my personal freedom in mind.

My box of cornflakes has the same EULA

[YojimboJango]

Really? This is in every EULA. Who cares.

Re:Business is business

[foobsr]

google was supposed to the company that was "different"

Google was marketed as the company that was "different". Fixed that for you.

It is impossible for a 'good' company to exist/survive in a market that is ruled by (capitalist) laws of competition and profit.

CC.

Re:It wont even install for me

[beav007]

Don't take it personally, but I can't have any respect for people (or their opinion) who use the phrase "epic fail"...makes one sound like those immature "cool" kids on the web.

Epic fail.

ah, yes... Google is evil...

[Wolfger]

"for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services"

How horrible. The world shall surely come to an end now. They can reuse anything you submit, post, or display to promote further use of the browser. Those bastards. </roll-eyes>

Re:ah, yes... Google is evil...

[andy.ruddock]

But it's not limited to reuse, but also allows adaptation and modification.
You say "Google are evil",
Google reports "Wolfger says 'Google are not evil'"

Re:ah, yes... Google is evil...

[mr_mischief]

Except that would be fraud or misrepresentation, which is illegal.

Illegal acts cannot be even covered by contracts (except to say that any illegal act by one party releases the other party) let alone made legal by them. No, I'm not a lawyer. This isn't something you need to go to law school to know, though.

Go ask a lawyer.

Re:ah, yes... Google is evil...

[andy.ruddock]

Yes, bad example on my part, just making the point that the EULA covers more than simply reuse.

Re:It wont even install for me

[MyLongNickName]

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.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that's *not* what happens when I run "svn checkout" ? Lies! Damn lies!

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[TheJasper]

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.

It's still in early beta...

[brianez21]

Prepare to be even less impressed and look at the V8 src, they only have codegen for ia32 and arm. Plenty of hardcoded platform specific (windows) guff in the browser codebase too.

This stuff might have been acceptable in 2003 but it's -DEPIC_FAIL for 2008.

There's build instructions for Mac OS X and Linux. Of course, the browser doesn't actually run on *nix yet, but you can't say they're not trying.

Re:It's still in early beta...

[Martin Blank]

Actually, it's a 0.2.149.27 pre-release alpha.

Re:It's still in early beta...

[teh kurisu]

Google describe Chrome as 'multi-platform'. They also say that they're tailoring each version to the platform it runs on, so that it doesn't have the 'rough edges' that (for example) Firefox and Safari have.

Chromium's overall design has been multi-platform from the start, but we are also committed to getting the details right for users on each platform.

Re:It's still in early beta...

[makomk]

Translation: they can't do decent cross-platform coding, so they've just scattered Win32 dependencies everywhere and hoped to be able to port it to other platforms later.

A simple answer

[doomedpr0digy]

it is so they can display the pages on your computer. no other reason. A web host has to have very similar language included in their hosting agreement, so they can display a client's web page. paranoid much?

WebKit text anti-aliasing?

[sapphire wyvern]

What font anti-aliasing technology does WebKit (and by extension Google Chrome) use?

I'm curious to know if it is using ClearType under Windows or its own built-in anti-aliasing. Does Windows Safari render text exactly the same as Chrome? I vaguely recall some criticism of Safari for Windows when it came out on this basis.

Re:WebKit text anti-aliasing?

[shaka]

Safari for Windows must have it's own anti-aliasing (or use some non-standard settings, I'm not familiar with the deep intricacies of ClearType). It doesn't look like anything else on my system, all text is both bolder in general and blurrier.

Chrome, however, looks exactly like Firefox for Windows and Internet Explorer 7.

This both from a cursory glance and from zooming in and comparing side-by-side. I would post screenshots, but I don't have the time so you will just have to take my word for it.

Re:WebKit text anti-aliasing?

[sapphire wyvern]

No worries, thanks for the response.

Re:WebKit text anti-aliasing?

[Carewolf]

What font anti-aliasing technology does WebKit (and by extension Google Chrome) use?

Those of the underlying text-renderer. The text-renderer is _not_ part of WebKit, and Safari and Chrome are bound to use different ones. Though Chrome might end up using the same on OSX

RSS

[nbucking]

The last thing on my mind when trying Chrome is the End user agreement. I like a lot of it's features and wish that firefox had them. But where is RSS? I simply cannot live without my syndications.

Re:RSS

[mr_mischief]

On Google Feeds, of course!

Going slightly off topic to discuss the browser..

[mike_diack]

I was underwhelmed myself...

They've done a BAD job of the installer:

1) It doesn't let you choose where to install the app.
2) It doesn't install it under \Program Files - believe it or not it installs the binaries in the profile directory of the user who did the installation!

Item 2) of course means that for Windows users (like me) who have multiple Windows accounts are absolutely stuck - they can't run the browser except when logged on as that same user who did the installation. For me, because I run as a limited user but login as admin to install software, that means that the limited user account can't access the chrome files, which are stored in the admin profile directory!

Really stupid design mistakes - I've already reported them to Google - I hope they fix it pronto. With that kind of a bug it shouldn't have even made it to beta.
Not only that but when you uninstall it - it _doesn't_ uninstall the google updater that it added during the installation process.

Not impressed.

Mike

Mile-high Tab Bar

[sapphire wyvern]

Interesting. Chrome omits the menu bar, much like IE7+; but since it keeps the tabs at the top of its window, when it's run maximised, you get the benefits of a "mile high" tab bar. You can just slam the mouse to the top of the screen to pick a tab, much like the much-touted Mac OS menu bar.

I wonder if this violates any Apple UI patents? I have heard that Apple patents are one of the main reasons why Windows attaches menu bars to windows in the way it does.

It also doesn't bother with a status bar at the bottom; hyperlink destinations get a sort of "slide-up notification" at the bottom, but the space is generally used for rendering the page. Good idea.

All in all, it seems to be a fine product - but I will keep using Firefox until Chrome gets some extensibility, I think. Hopefully Chrome's good ideas will be adopted by Firefox as well!

Re:It wont even install for me

[InfiniteLoopCounter]

Congratulations - you just set the Slashdot record for the least comprehensible post ever.

Here, I'll translate that for you:

(1.000 times 10^100, swap position of o/l, o -> e) has machine language instructions encoded by a compiler which first ran through a preprocessor from some characters saved in a file in physical memory that a lot for the (opposite of hard) + ware on faster than walking on an operating system that has a penguin as a mascot (not technically because Linux is just the kernel, but I will let that slide). It seems [to the GP poster] like half their (not the penguins) stuff they (result of incontinence) through alcoholic beverage.

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[o'reor]

... especially when they are not written on paper at all :-)

This and several other foibles were covered here

[Rocky1138]

This post: How to make Google Chrome even better

Re:It wont even install for me

[MightyYar]

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.

I told u so, google is the new evil empire

[cinnamon colbert]

for several years, i have been saying that google is the new evil empire, and you all laughed at me
credit where credit is due
why is google the new borg? because by definition, for profits with near monopoly power become abusive - it is in their dna

Re:I told u so, google is the new evil empire

[maxume]

Google doesn't have near monopoly power. All you have to do to compete with them is offer ad impressions at a lower rate than they do. Their market share does give them some nice efficiencies, but, for example, a local website can offer locally targeted advertising at a much better ratio (because a club in LA is not all that interested in impressions from Idaho).

This EULA means nothing..

[Eskarel]

IANAL, but I do live in the real world, and this doesn't mean what people are claiming it does because there's no way for it to be enforced.

1. In order for google to even have any idea, let alone prove, what it has this royalty free license to, everything chrome displays would have to be either proxied through google, or have a copy sent to google. This would be prohibitive in the sense that even Google doesn't have that kind of bandwidth and server space to dedicate to something with no revenue stream, and because someone would have seen it happening by now.
2. I'd be willing to bet it's can't be enforced. EULA's are pretty questionable legally as it is, and even if this sort of thing was in a written contract signed in blood, the courts would probably toss it out as being unreasonable. Most of the stuff which gets rendered in a browser the person using the browser doesn't even have the right to grant license to in the first place, and no judge is going to find that displaying something in a browser is a reasonable cause for this result
3. Google are neither stupid nor suicidal. Actually trying to enforce something like this would be disastrous for their ad revenue and despite all their clever ideas Google does't have any other revenue.

4. I could be wrong, google could be trying for the most audacious evil in known history, but I sort of doubt it. Even when applied to Google's services all it is is an attempt to cover their asses legally. In order to have a file on flickr google has to be able to show it to people(because that's what flickr does) and so google has to have a license to do so.

How to disable GoogleUpdate.exe

[untree]

Removing might be harder (but unnecessary) than this, but the following will prevent the service from loading:

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services

Find the Google Update Service, select Properties from the right-click menu, and Disable.

Re:How to disable GoogleUpdate.exe

[blind biker]

Thanks a lot, very kind of you.

BTW: I am quite pleased with Chrome so far. Seems surprisingly lightweight.

Down with "add spam"!

[amake]

I want "subtract spam"!

Re:Down with "add spam"!

[Spatial]

Impossible. Obviously, spam is unsigned.

That part of the EULAD does not apply to Chrome.

[Galileo_M2]

Read point 1.2 of the EULA and you will see that 95% of the EULA does NOT apply to Chrome. 1.2 Unless otherwise agreed in writing with Google, your agreement with Google will always include, at a minimum, the terms and conditions set out in this document. These are referred to below as the âoeUniversal Termsâ. Open source software licenses for Google Chrome source code constitute separate written agreements. To the limited extent that the open source software licenses expressly supersede these Universal Terms, the open source licenses govern your agreement with Google for the use of Google Chrome or specific included components of Google Chrome.

Re:It wont even install for me

[g0dsp33d]

You'll change your mind when Duke Nukem Forever comes out.

FUD?

[Vexorian]

All rightly, I am on Linux so I can't download it, why can't anyone post a whole copy of the 'EULA' instead of this out-of-context excerpt (Actually the author of the 'article' seems to be very biased based on all the articles published there, hope not to see a link to that person again here) When I find links to google they definitely don't mention this at all in the ToS or in the privacy policy. So, is this true at all?

Re:FUD?

[Galileo_M2]

Link to EULA:
http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html

Re:FUD?

[clone53421]

http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html

You've mixed up Chrome and Chromium

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome is Google's private, closed-source browser. Chromium is the open-source (BSD-licensed) project from which Chrome takes some of its code. Chromium is completely non-operational at this point in time (ie. it doesn't run), as it's very early days on the open-source project. Chrome in contrast is very nicely operational already, since its code is not the same as that being put together by the Chromium folks.

And the key point here is that Chrome and Chromium have completely different licenses, therefore your comment is entirely worthless.

Re:It wont even install for me

[bistromath007]

Yes, and they will continually improve it. How terrible.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention...

[dkegel]

Google's looking into this issue now, thanks to everybody who reported it.

Re:Thanks for bringing this to our attention...

[Colonel Korn]

Google's looking into this issue now,
thanks to everybody who reported it.

Just kidding! We are instead working on developing new and exciting beta tools to help us deliver more effective targeted advertising to you.

Love,
Google (The real Google. You can trust me. I'm by definition not evil.)

This is strange

[Miros]

Having watched the video on the chrome page at google, it seems to me that they are blaming the current browsers for effectively holding them and the rest of the web development community back. This is probably fair in a lot of respects, however, google used to do amazing things despite these limitations. Further, there are better ways of doing this (working through standards organizations to push the extensions of specifications which would then be built into mature platforms) as opposed to creating a new platform which will have its own (by design i might add) incompatibilities (or everything else will gain incompatibilities) and require extended maintenance throughout its indefinite browser lifespan. Except for the "we're going to open source it" rhetoric, the launch of this product is being marketed/pitched in the same way that I would imagine microsoft first pushed Internet explorer. Netscape/Java are bad at developing applications/services that run within web browsers that do nifty things. / Come check out our new and improved VBScript, iFrames, and the mother of all "application in a web browser" technologies, ActiveX / Haven't we been through this already and found the results rather hard to swallow?

Re:This is strange

[mr_mischief]

This uses JavaScript for its interactive web pages and it worked right away with the Flash I had installed for IE and Firefox without needing to have it configured separately. Gears is even a set of JavaScript libraries. What new standards is it trying to set, other than robustness and performance?

Re:It wont even install for me

[mrtvfuencxozd]

hey this is how my boss thinks things work...

Re:It wont even install for me

[Graywolf]

Exactly. The GoogleUpdater was still running after I uninstalled. Don't be evil, my ass...

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

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)

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

Epic fail.
What does the Electronic Privacy Information Center have to do with it?

Not Evil?

[sm62704]

Mod me down, google fans. I think it's time that Google stop the "don't be evil" bullshit. From helping China and other countries repress their citizens to buying doubleclick, now this eula, the "don't be evil" has become a joke.

iGoogle is my home page and they have the best search on the internet, but they're no less evil than any other multinational corporation. I take offense when someone not only lies to me, but knows I know they're lying and keeps lying anyway. My ex-wife used to do that and I hated it.

It's all about the money and nothing else, just like any other corporation.

Re:It wont even install for me

[scubamage]

I honestly don't mind it, but it kind of undercuts what would be a truly epic failure. Diplomacy during WWII? That was an epic fail. Creating a less-than-funny lolcat image? You 'fail' indeed, though the 'epic'ness of the failure is questionable at best.

you worried about microsoft

[circletimessquare]

dominating everything in 1998. you should now worry about google dominating everything in 2008

shun chrome. i don't care if its the best thing since sliced bread. the problem is what it represents in terms of power and dominance in the hands of one company. that's bad for everyone

support firefox. let microsoft have the os, google have search, and firefox have the browser. keep a balance of power, or suffer under the boot of one company

Re:It wont even install for me

[brianwgray]

Whew, thank you for the translation. Now I understand.

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[maxume]

Given the part where he states that sending a hash of a url does not reveal the url to Google (he even goes on to state that Google sends a larger hash of the url back!), read *very* carefully.

The 404 Horses of the Apocalype

[DeadDecoy]

Yes, they found out slashdot was one of the worst malicious sites out there, as it periodically issued random DDOS attacks to other sites hosting content of scientific import. Once the shlashdot-reading chrome developers discover this, they'll take it off the blacklist (as they too need a daily helping of slashdot) but it'll be layered in warnings and throttled to all-hell. Unfortunately, this will cause paradox leading to the Apocalypse as google will slashdot slashdot just to make the internet work and Chrome function normally. The lucky few will be raptured to Apple, where they will spend the rest eternity amidst pretty, hermetically sealed plastic and user friendly software.

Re:The 404 Horses of the Apocalype

[mr_mischief]

I read Slashdot all day yesterday on Chrome. I didn't see a problem other than the JavaScript acting a little wonky in relation specifically to page scrolling.

Re:The 404 Horses of the Apocalype

[DeadDecoy]

Slashdot has died and risen. That means the Apocalypse is almost upon us! Put on your tin-foil hats and cower, for the second coming of Steve Jobs is at hand!

Is this legal?

[DragonTHC]

I will make it legal! --Sergey Brin

certainly this is something to worry about. There are, however, alternatives to the google services.

If I read this correctly, if you use google services, they're saying they own everything on their servers, whether or not they actually do.

I just don't think it will hold up in a court of law.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Machtyn]

It's interesting that "legitimate" software thinks it can act like spyware and the community won't notice. I am with you, I will not install software that doesn't give me control over what is and where it is installed. Especially when there is no notice or ability to disable certain unwanted "features".

I've got a Utilities, Internet Utilities, Multimedia, Hardware, and a Games tree on my Start menu for a reason.

Re:It wont even install for me

[eagee]

Epic fail.

All I know...

[ericspinder]

I installed it last night at home, all I noticed was that it was fast. I didn't play with it for too long but page rendering was quick, and crisp. Based on your observations they might have a hard time creating a Linux port, but the windows version seems to work well (so far).

Precaching is an issue

[Forseti]

Performance drops dramatically if you disable precaching. I run Firefox with precaching disabled and haven't noticed such a big drop in performance, and precaching has some security issues, so it may need some work in that area. (Yeah, I'm paranoid.) All around though, I'm impressed for a first release! Very little bloat, and it still does pretty much everything I need it to.

I also noticed Chrome trying to add Google Updater to my registry to run at logon. That's probably what some people noticed trying to connect to the 'net. I disabled it and Chrome works fine without it.

"Chrome" this!

[hyades1]

Normally these ridiculous EULA's are attached to software you really need, so you don't have much choice but to hope a court will see things your way if there's ever a problem. But even if Chrome was a really amazing browser, which it's not, I don't have a compelling need for it. So they can take their ridiculous "We own everything you bring within a hundred yards of our software" statement and shove it right, straight up their ass.

Re:It wont even install for me

[aliens]

It's fine on the web. Wait till you hear someone use that in a real conversation. And not just in a geek group setting.

Terrible license agreement

[greenfield]

[Note: I am not a lawyer.]

As other posters have pointed out, the Chrome privacy policy seems to make section 11 moot as it implies that Google will not collect information other than what is required to actually run the browser. So while they assert a royalty-free perpetual license to some content, Google states that they are not capturing the content.

Several other web-based services have a similar license agreement. Generally, the reason why Google's standard Terms of Service requires a royalty-free license is so they can syndicate and publish content you decide to distribute using Google's services. This doesn't necessarily seem applicable to using a web browser. However, even if the content in Section 11 should be included, there are a couple of extra phrases that Google has that other companies do not include. And they make a real difference with other services like Picasa Web Albums.

One extra phrase that Google includes in their Terms of Service is "promote." Other companies, like Yahoo and Apple, do not have this clause. To me, this implies that Google can use your content in advertisements for free. Another clause gives Google the right to share your content with business partners for the provision of syndicated services. Again, this could be for promotional reasons; you might end us having your content used in advertisements for Google's business partners, especially as the reasons for sharing the content are not well defined in the Terms of Service.

I wrote a comparison of the Google Picasa Web Terms of Service against similar companies. No other company seems to grab the promotional rights to your material in the same manner that Google does.

Google can fix this problem for Chrome. Other services, like YouTube and Blogger, have much more specific terms of service that ameliorate the problems of Section 11 of the Google TOS. However, the better solution for Google is to fix their TOS in the first place to only grab the rights required to run their products.

Re:It wont even install for me

[MightyYar]

You installed "early Beta" software before it was even a day old and then call Google "evil" for some bug in the uninstaller?

I don't think you are ready for the bleeding edge. Did you file a bug report?

Re:It wont even install for me

[CDOS_CDOS run]

No he meant "Epoch Fail"

Re:It wont even install for me

[rabidmuskrat]

This is the same company that still says that gmail is in "beta." I'll be shocked if it is no longer "beta" within the next 4 years.

Re:It wont even install for me

[AioKits]

Don't take it personally, but I can't have any respect for people (or their opinion) who use the phrase "epic fail"...makes one sound like those immature "cool" kids on the web.

Epic fail.

Well, the internets IS serious business.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Idiomatick]

They stay in beta until they have a 50%+ market share at which point they decide they are probably doing half decent and throw an official release party.

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[Simon (S2)]

In metrics_service.cc
it sends everything you do in the toolbar to
static const char kMetricsURL[] =
        "https://toolbarqueries.google.com/firefox/metrics/collect";
It collects everything and sends it to google servers, on startup and on shutdown.

// Ongoing log typically
// contain very detailed records of user activities (ex: opened tab, closed
// tab, fetched URL, maximized window, etc.) In addition, just before an
// ongoing log is closed out, a call is made to gather memory statistics. Those
// memory statistics are deposited into a histogram, and the log finalization
// code is then called. In the finalization, a call to a Histogram server
// acquires a list of all local histograms that have been flagged for upload
// to the UMA server.
//
// When the browser shuts down, there will typically be a fragment of an ongoing
// log that has not yet been transmitted. At shutdown time, that fragment
// is closed (including snapshotting histograms), and converted to text. Note
// that memory stats are not gathered during shutdown, as gathering *might* be
// too time consuming. The textual representation of the fragment of the
// ongoing log is then stored persistently as a string in the PrefServices, for
// potential transmission during a future run of the product.

WHAT THE FUCK. Keep ff ftw.
If your privacy means nothing to you just use Chrome.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Idiomatick]

We all no google beta isn't realllllly beta. BUT this is actually Google beta beta, i know how this can be confusing. Really they should come up with a word to distinguish release products alpha products and beta products but that would be too simple.
 
Also so you know, google's labeling things beta is not to get away with things, its so they can say 'man we are still in beta and our product is 10x better than yours, god you suck microsoft'.

Now we have proprietary navigation

[Anthony_Mitchell]

The merging of the address bar and search bar gives Google too much control over navigation. It separates companies and website operators from their website addresses and brands. Companies spend heavily to establish and maintain brands. Google has just imposed itself between consumers and businesses. Direct navigation has now become proprietary search, whereby Google uses its discretion to filter out web addresses and domains that it deems less relevant. I object and I hope you do too.

Re:Now we have proprietary navigation

[mr_mischief]

Interestingly enough, I had Yahoo as my default search engine in Internet Explorer, and guess what became my default search engine in Chrome when I installed it? It sure as hell wasn't Google. In the settings, they also allow you to set it to Yahoo, Ask, or a few others after the installation.

Re:Now we have proprietary navigation

[Kalriath]

They actually import your IE search engines (maybe Firefox too if you have it installed?) - mine set to Live Search (for the irony?)

Data Retention Policy

[Whiteox]

Somehow what concerned me was what they actually did with the personal data they collect (privacy policy), and more specifically, how long that had to by law, keep the data as I think this varies from country to country. Are they bound by international standards or US standards?
Also, in some countries you are also bound by law to destroy personal data after a certain amount of time. This is not obvious in their privacy policy either.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Goaway]

So I take it you don't like open source software much, huh?

another reason not to use chrome

[the_B0fh]

about:plugins

ActiveX Plug-in
File name: activex-shim
ActiveX Plug-in provides a shim to support ActiveX controls

I know I know

[StrifeJester]

All your base are belong to us

Image Scaling...

[PhotoGuy]

Sigh...

I used to use Opera heavily (still do on occasion). When I zoom in/zoom out, it zooms the whole page, including images, as expected. Very handy, and easy to scale pages for appropriate viewing on a given device, browser windows, etc..

That was always a big beef of mine with Firefox, it never did it. But FireFox 3 added image scaling, whoohooo!

Now Chrome comes along. I love the process separation, Task manager, JavaScript speed. I'm ready to convert. But there's no scaling of images, just a lame-ass IE-ish text-size scaling.

Come on, it's 2008, it's not *that* hard to display an image scaled down (or up). In fact, the API calls you're using will likely do that for you. (And even if they didn't, there's probably a couple of thousand of open source libraries to do it for you; and coding image scaling yourself is fairly trivial...) I just don't get why browser manufacturers leave this out so frequently...

Pleeeeaaasse, Google, add this feature, and I'll convert.

compiled from source ..

[rs232]

What does the license say if you compile from source ..

nice FUD!

[wmduncan]

MS accounting wants to know where to send your check...

Re:It wont even install for me

[digitalgiblet]

The point of TFA is not that the code is flawed or imperfect, but rather that the BUSINESS practice described in the fine print is disturbing at best.

Basically Google is saying "All your base are belong to us."

Good thing they aren't evil. An evil company could do bad things with all that info they are storing about us...

Home Button

[cptsexy]

Where is it? Having to open a new tab every time I want to go there or having to type it in the address bar is lame.

Re:It wont even install for me

[interstellar_donkey]

Nope. Still don't get it. I'm reasonably sure that's still Swedish.

Re:It wont even install for me

[mr_mischief]

In case you didn't know, software is complex. Modern web browsers are complex things even as examples of software.

Google has done unit tests, automated whole application tests, and even used the most popular web sites in their ranking system to test the thing. Now they're allowing people to use a free product in exchange for admitting the users are testing it.

It's much better, in my opinion, than charging someone $300 for something that should still be in alpha.

Re:It wont even install for me

[interstellar_donkey]

Hardly epic. Just short and unimportant fail.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Goaway]

You know that comments on Slashdot can be replies to other comments, right?

Re:It wont even install for me

[mr_mischief]

I used it all day yesterday, and for stability it seems to beat IE 7 final and Firefox 3.0 final. It has a rough time topping FF 2.0.0.16 and Firefox 3.0.1 in that category, but it is the first public beta after all.

Re:Open source?

[mcvos]

1. Get and compile source
2. Release without an EULA
3. ???
4. Profit!

Except for the profit part, but yes.

But even that Google has already done for you. Chromium is the open source version of Chrome, with BSD license and no EULA.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Sancho]

It's interesting that "legitimate" software thinks it can act like spyware and the community won't notice.

Oh for heaven's sake.

It's open source. If Google thought that people wouldn't notice spyware in there, they're pretty damned stupid. Here's a hint--it probably updates Chrome on your computer. Out of date software is a pretty big problem in the Windows world, you know.

I am with you, I will not install software that doesn't give me control over what is and where it is installed. Especially when there is no notice or ability to disable certain unwanted "features".

Now that, I can agree with. Then again, it's beta software. Today is only the second day it's been released to the public. I'm sure that, in time, these kinks will be smoothed out.

Perhaps if you have a problem with imperfect software, you shouldn't be installing betas. Of course, you probably shouldn't be installing any software, but at least you might have a legitimate complaint if it's a release rather than a pre-release.

Re:It wont even install for me

[interstellar_donkey]

I'm reasonably sure that they don't fly aircraft or spacecraft with beta software.

"uhhh . . . This is your captain speaking. To save costs, we've, uhhh, been flying with untested beta software that controls the, uhh, auto-pilot and navigation systems on the aircraft. We'll all be dead in 3 minutes. Thankyou for flying Southwest"

Re:It wont even install for me

[interstellar_donkey]

Wait... does that mean I have to be invited to use Chrome? And will it give me 50 invitations to give out to my friends?

It's unenforceable... and I'll tell you why.

[Half-pint HAL]

I'm assuming this is a standard Google agreement, and wasn't written with Chrome in mind.

Why? Because as written it effectively makes web browsing instantly into fraud.

Reading the EULA literally, it says that simply by visiting a webpage (it includes the word "display" in there, remember) I'm telling Google that I am an agent of the copyright holder and granting rights on the copyright holder's behalf.

Given the nature of the internet, this is likely to be untrue in the region of 99.999% of the time -- and as a major internet infrastructure company, Google knows this better than most.

If Google accepts these rights and exercises them, knowing them to be fraudulent, they are responsible. They cannot argue "good faith" in a case like this.

This is not "OMG! Google do evil!", just "OMG! Google got so tied up in Web2.0 that they forgot to write an EULA for Web."

HAL.

Re:It wont even install for me

[haystor]

There are those of us who consider something like Chrome to have value before it is perfect. If it is possible to have a year early in a buggy state, I'd like to check it out and use it in my plans.

If you don't like it try this: don't use it.

Re:It wont even install for me

[jebrew]

Wow, I've got to admit, I missed the updater. Thanks. Glad I didn't put this on my home system...work system is going to be nuked in a few weeks anyway.

Re:Great License Agreement

[TheSpoom]

Technically if you saw the EULA or it in any way informed you of it, you're legally bound to it, since it includes an "effective on first use of Services" clause.

Re:It wont even install for me

[lysergic.acid]

actually, i think Southwest uses shareware.

the aircraft takes off just fine. but instead of the landing gears deploying you just get a scrolling message asking you to register the software.

Re:It wont even install for me

[lysergic.acid]

yes, and ignoring the development stage of a piece of software lets you make unqualified criticisms of pre-production releases.

Gmail was kept in beta for an exceptionally long period of time, but it was also fully-functional and pretty much stable for the majority of its beta period (which is why its extended beta status was considered unnecessary). but Google Chrome has been out for how long? 24 hours?

the point of beta testing is to get feedback from users who aren't part of the development team. if you have complaints or suggestions about the software, then you should make them to Google so they may improve on it in the release candidates. having beta software that's imperfect is not a reason to immediately dismiss a company's development abilities.

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[mr_mischief]

I don't suppose a network-based installer or a web browser should make network connections. That'd just be silly!

Or even better than

[www.sorehands.com]

Charging $300 for the product, then another $100 for calling in to report the bug, then another $200 for the upgrade that enhances performance by releasing resources not needed. Oh, I'm sorry, I was thinking of Sage Software's Act!

Never mind.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Machtyn]

As a person who deals with alpha and pre-release software on a daily basis, Google's beta software is no big deal to me. I was going to play with it to see how it interacted with the software I deal with from day to day. I still may after they iron out the install issues and the EULA terms. I'd prefer my workings in a browser not to be owned by the browser's developing company.

It's open source. If Google thought that people wouldn't notice spyware in there,they're pretty damned stupid.

I'm surprised you think Google is not spying on you. Granted, they are more likely than others to only acquire non-specific data, but they still track it. That's how they make their money... web tracking trends -> advertising. google-analytics.com is still one of the scripts that are blocked by NoScript on my Firefox software.

And, yes, I do like having control over when my software updates. For better and worse, PCs are very dynamic. Each desktop is not exactly the same with respect to CPU, memory, HDD, graphics drivers, etc, installed software, browser plugins, BHOs, etc. A change or update in the browser may break (and often does in Firefox) the plugins I find most useful and necessary.

My "'legitimate' software" line was a generic line, not specifically aimed at Google's Chrome, but includes it. And just because something is Open Source does not necessarily mean it will be peer reviewed. (Another generic statement.) I know that Google's open sourced software will be reviewed by the masses, but not all software is reviewed. Am I paranoid? Yes. It keeps my computer as safe as my knowledge of safe-computing can keep it.

Re:It wont even install for me

[MyLongNickName]

Gmail was kept in beta for an exceptionally long period of time

Nope, it still is in Beta. Try again.

having beta software that's imperfect is not a reason to immediately dismiss a company's development abilities.

Again, try again. I never dismissed their abilities. I simply pointed out how the person I replied to waved his hand and dismissed Google development problems as "Just Beta".

And there is no justification for calling Google's stuff Beta. They make it available to anyone. It is in no way limited to who can access. gMail is the perfect example of this. Feedback is a perpetual part of the software cycle. Iterative release.... look it up.

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[mr_mischief]

They do encourage you to print it out, although they also reserve the right to change the terms with no notice.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Machtyn]

Nah, It's because I don't want a list of 50+ program menu items lining the entire desktop.

Re:It wont even install for me

[lysergic.acid]

when has Google ever used a product's beta status to deflect criticisms for a bug? was Gmail exceptionally buggy during its extended beta period?

Chrome has been in beta for less than 24 hours. so what exactly are they being called out on?

Re:It wont even install for me

[joranbelar]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. It installed fine on XP x64 for me.

Re:That part of the EULAD does not apply to Chrome

[clone53421]

From point 1.1, "Services" explicitly DOES refer to "software".

All your website are belong to us

[517714]

Sorry, it is completely obligatory.

Re:It wont even install for me

[BronsCon]

Well, in this case, it is beta.

Modified Profit steps: save steps

[mr_mischief]

1. Go here
2. buy the Act! from last year or the year before
3. Save!

Sage doesn't illegally set minimum prices with resellers for old versions like Microsoft and Adobe seem to do.

I bought a copy of Peachtree in its retail package for $30 because it was an end-of-sales product. Sage still let me register for the support, gives me courtesy calls to see what they can do for me, and offers hundreds of dollars in discounts on upgrades. I even told one of the guys on the courtesy call that I don't need the updated tax tables (I don't have employees and sell no taxable products) and that the old copy was priced that low. He said it'd be silly to upgrade if the old copy does what I need and I can buy the new version at that price next year when it's at end-of-sales status.

There is one drawback: Now that it's almost 2009, my copy of Peachtree 2006 that I bought in 2007 is almost out of tech support coverage. Maybe I'll buy 2008 for $43 dollars and get two more years of support availability.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Discoflamingo13]

I think the comparison is unwarranted - mission-critical embedded systems are orders of magnitude less complex than a web browser, which is one of the reasons they can be developed to such high levels of stability. I do software verification for the civilian aerospace industry. We have the luxury of deploying this software only on hardware we built ourselves, which is made of some of the toughest electronic components on Earth. In terms of testing advantages we can leverage before flight: 1. the software has requirements which are specified to ridiculous detail from the integrated system level on down, carefully vetted by all interested parties, and 2. They are highly deterministic, in that there are very few ways that a human can/will ever interact with the system (which is why they're called "embedded systems"). There are no keyboards or monitors for users to (mis)use. Most of the interaction the system has is with other systems just like it.

Re:Great License Agreement

[Kingrames]

Yeah, and I bet THAT's legally binding.

Re:It wont even install for me

[lysergic.acid]

gmail is a software service. when was the last time yahoo mail made an iterative release?

Why take a chance?

[wfstanle]

Maybe it was not what they intended to say in their EULA, but it's there! Until the offending phrase is removed, they can try to legally enforce it. A judge would probably laugh them out of the courtroom and invalidate the clause. At the same time, with all the crazy legal decisions made, why take a chance?

Re:It wont even install for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the AC who posted about the installation annoyances.

Since then, I have started using the Chromium snapshot from

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/

This is much more to my liking. No installer, just a nice clean zip archive that you can uncompress anywhere. No Google updater running in the background.

The design is very clean, although I wish it would use my system colours and visual style (msstyles). Browsing is snappy and seems to render pages well. Passes Acid2 and scores 79/100 on Acid3. No smooth scrolling and no AdBlock, but that is understandable considering it's a new browser.

If Google were to just clean up the issues with the installer, this looks like a very promising beginning.

Re:It wont even install for me

[EvanED]

Ordinarily I'd agree completely. But this is Google we're talking about, where "beta" has almost ceased to have meaning. By their typical schedule, Chrome will be out of beta circa 2017.

Re:It wont even install for me

[xtracto]

You installed "early Beta" software before it was even a day old and then call Google "evil" for some bug in the uninstaller?

I hate how Google apologists have taken over slashdot. Why do people try to make less of an issue that Google has produced a crappy project (with a terrible license IMHO).

No, the browser is not a day old, it is not as if they just sat a bunch of their programmers on the 1st of September to do develop the web browser. I am sure it has been developed since a very long time.

Similarly to IE 8 and to Firefox 3. What this goes to show is that in their urge to show to people whatever next "cool product" they will have, Google has published a half assed version of a program when it is not even BETA.

A Beta product is a product that is maybe 80% complete (if not more) and ready to be tested by people *outside* the company/close developing group.

I felt tempted to mod down all the google apologists (they are so annoying) but gah, I would be making a wrong use of my mod points... I rather write this rant.

Re:It wont even install for me

[harl]

Don't be evil is a lie.

Re:It wont even install for me

[atraintocry]

We all no google beta isn't realllllly beta. BUT this is actually Google beta beta, i know how this can be confusing. Really they should come up with a word to distinguish release products alpha products and beta products but that would be too simple.

Also so you know, google's labeling things beta is not to get away with things, its so they can say 'man we are still in beta and our product is 10x better than yours, god you suck microsoft'.

I'll...keep that in mind.

I can debunk this conspiracy theory

[MattCutts]

I'm a software engineer at Google and I can debunk the notion that Google wants the rights to everything you touch in Google Chrome. We don't, and we'll either clarify officially soon or change the Terms of Service to make that very clear. All things considered, there wasn't much FUD surrounding the launch of Google Chrome, but I'm more than happy to put this conspiracy theory to rest.

Re:I can debunk this conspiracy theory

[DragonTHC]

I didn't read it that way. In fact, the beginning of that clause starts with "You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services." a fact, the poster conveniently left out.

I read it in a way that makes sense with what google does. Knowing exactly what people are doing with the web seems to be of paramount importance to what google does. You can't stay in business without eyeballs.

Re:It wont even install for me

[BIGELLOW]

They tested it. It still has bugs. So they're releasing it as an open beta. This wasn't "in vogue" in the 90's... but these days, MANY things are released in a beta after the developers have been unable to find any bugs themselves.

When developers look for bugs, it's in alpha. When the developers cannot find anymore bugs, but they know it could benefit from many more eyes, computer configurations, etc... they release it as a beta. Once all the bugs are worked out, then it is golden and is released.

Google misuses the term "beta" and sometimes mean it as "we have more features planned for this until we're comfortable taking the beta label off"... think Gmail. But in this particular case, this is a true beta from Google. Expect bugs. If you don't want to help beta test the product, wait until it has been tested for a while and is fully released.

Should we also complain that the first beta version of IE8 had bugs in it? Sure, let's.

Re:It wont even install for me

[merreborn]

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.

Good software takes 10 years to write.

There's a reason "mission critical" software costs millions of dollars to develop and license. And there's a reason that free software, for which it's impractical to spends millions of dollars on development, has a few warts.

Nevermind the fact that a browser must be fresh -- if you don't support all the latest standards, you're useless; and if you do, then you are, necessarily, somewhat hastily developed.

You wouldn't *want* to use a browser developed to operate to "mission critical" standards. It'd have a feature set comparable to Lynx.

Re:It wont even install for me

[digitalgiblet]

You know that comments on Slashdot can be replies to other comments, right?

Are you serious?

Why doesn't someone TELL me these things???

This will lead to ANARCHY I tell you!

Re:It wont even install for me

[sglewis100]

[quote] What kinds of dummies try to release open source spyware? If the browser itself has any merit at all, then presumably someone will modify the source to remove the nasties and make it run on more platforms, then release it under a different name. Meanwhile I've got Firefox, Opera, K-meleon and OB1 - who needs another browser?[/quote] If Google's browsers grabs serious market share and builds up their app platform (Gears or whatever they call it) - Google wins. If you recompile a cleaner installing version and YOURS grabs the marketshare and helps build up their app platform acceptance, then Google wins. The only difference is, they make ad revenue either way and you just sit and code.

Re:It wont even install for me

[MightyYar]

I hate how Google apologists have taken over slashdot.

Wow, I already know that your argument is going to be weak - you immediately find the need to demonize me as an "apologist". And in the first sentence!

I am sure it has been developed since a very long time.

Thanks, Chucky. Very insightful. I thought that they started the project yesterday.

A Beta product is a product that is maybe 80% complete (if not more) and ready to be tested by people *outside* the company/close developing group.

Is that some kind of industry standard, or just some definition that you pulled out of your ass? Because it sounds like you just said that Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google all use a different definition than you do.

But I suppose you'll just dismiss me as a MS, Mozilla, Google, and what the hell - an Apple apologist, since I'm sure the Safari Beta violated your Beta rule as well.

Re:It wont even install for me

[digitalgiblet]

You know that comments on Slashdot can be replies to other comments, right?

I see what happened. The comment you replied to was below my threshold so I didn't see it.

Re:It wont even install for me

[digitalgiblet]

Actually you could use the Agile/iterative approach to spacecraft. You'd have a lot of dead astronauts, but eventually you'd have some kick-ass spacecraft!

Open Source? Not!

[__aavonx8281]

Section 10.2 raises severe doubts about the open source nature of Chrome:

"You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing."

Re:It wont even install for me

[xtracto]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Beta

Re:It wont even install for me

[MightyYar]

Even if Wikipedia held more weight than the actual practice of every single major web vendor, your excerpt includes:

As the Internet has allowed for rapid and inexpensive distribution of software, companies have begun to take a more flexible approach to use of the word "beta". [1] Netscape Communications was infamous for releasing alpha level versions of its Netscape web browser to the public and calling them âoebetaâ releases. In February 2005, ZDNet published an article about the recent phenomenon of a beta version often staying for years and being used as if it were in production-level [2]. It noted that Gmail and Google News, for example, had been in beta for a long period of time and were not expected to drop the beta status despite the fact that they were widely used; however, Google News did leave beta in January 2006. This technique may also allow a developer to delay offering full support and/or responsibility for remaining issues. In the context of Web 2.0, people even talk of perpetual betas to signify that some software is meant to stay in beta state. Also, "beta" is sometimes used to indicate something more like a release candidate such as the Halo 3 public beta.

Re:It wont even install for me

[idunno2112]

You don't work in the aircraft, spacecraft, power industry or telecommunications do you? There's no way to test everything economically. Look at the construction industry. It is considered quite mature compared to the software industry. Even the best construction crew in the world, nay the universe, will build a house that has or will develop issues. There's no such thing as perfect software: testing isn't done to fix bugs, but to find some them. Now considering the length of time Duke Nuke'Em Forever is taking to release, it should be the most bug free piece of software this side of a pace maker!

Re:It wont even install for me

[Goaway]

Pretty good example of why comment hiding and comment threading really isn't a very good combination.

Re:It wont even install for me

[riceboy50]

I think it especially beats out IE 7 Beta

Fixed that for ya.

Re:It wont even install for me

[ElAurian]

Yeah, that's a little sloppy, but give them some credit; at least the process names itself GoogleUpdate and not vitalsystemprocessdonottouchoryourcomputerwillexplode.exe.

Straight from Google's legal team...

[enomar]

"In order to keep things simple for our users, we try to use the same set of legal terms (our Universal Terms of Service) for many of our products. Sometimes, as in the case of Google Chrome, this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don't apply well to the use of that product. We are working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome."

Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome

Re:Straight from Google's legal team...

[magus_melchior]

I really hope that Google won't become like the telecom companies or any other company where the desire for cash outweighs common sense. Everyone online is jaded because of all the bullshit that the big companies pull on us, and we all expect Google to somehow perfectly live up to its "do no evil" ideal, even though we perfectly know that it is impossible. Why else do we pounce on Google or anyone who tries to do good in a world where evil is the expected norm from the wealthy and powerful?

For once I'd like to see online people do what they do best: mine for trustworthy information and verify whether the bullshit is real, and then start the flamethrowers.

So here's the ripple of evil...

[dfsmith]

As other posters have pointed out, the Chrome privacy policy seems to make section 11 moot as it implies that Google will not collect information other than what is required to actually run the browser.

Google has the right to collect and distribute displayed content using the service. (Section 11, and definition of service which includes the software.)

Suppose... They collect your banking information. However, they are only permitted (by privacy policy) to use the information to help make the browser run.

They are also permitted to update the browser without informing you. (In the ToS.) Now consider this plan:

An update to the browser makes a license fee applicable for the "service". To help your browser run better, they will automatically deduct from the bank account that you gave them the information for.

Oooh, yes, that's beautifully evil. Far-fetched, but valid in their terms of service nonetheless.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned much, is the clause in the ToS where I assert that I have the right to grant my rights (reproduction, distribution, etc.) to Google. This means that if they use stuff from me, but it wasn't mine, they can sue me for fallaciously asserting that I did have such rights.

Google may not be evil, but they have the castle, moat, army and infrastructure in place. Now they're trying to install the pincers; and I'm getting uncomfortable.

A new EULA has been posted...

[enomar]

http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html 11. Content license from you 11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Its EPIC FAIL stopid.

[joe_n_bloe]

Q.E.D.

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[Pijalu]

read the code and you will see this is driven by a registry key - and you can even change it in option-under the hood-general- uncheck 'help google...'

Re:It wont even install for me

[KGIII]

I can has epic fail nao plz?

Re:It wont even install for me

[MyLongNickName]

First: My reply to you was very rude. I apologize for the tone of it.

I guess in my mind, there is no difference between Google's "beta" and a full release. I would be hard pressed to figure out anything that would differentiate their gmail service "beta" and a Version 1.0 of another product.

Now, Google can do whatever it wants with branding (I don't pay for it). But, at the same time, I do. I am Google's product in a way. 90%+ of their money is advertising. Without me and you, they have no market. They entice me and you to be there market with products like these. At some point, that may change, but that is the landscape right now.

So, can I complain? Sure. The same as I can complain about Microsoft. The beta tag doesn't mean beta to me.

Re:It wont even install for me

[lysergic.acid]

eh, don't worry about it. i've gotten far ruder replies. and you're right about gmail still being in beta. so thank you for correcting me.

as far as Gmail's perpetual beta status is concerned, i think it may have been more of a marketing ploy that they've just decided to hang on to because it's become kind of a long-standing joke within the geek community.

and i completely agree that you have the right to complain. i mean, making a product or service free doesn't make it immune to criticisms. like you said, they still rely on users indirectly for advertising revenue. and even if that weren't so, one can still criticize the service purely for the sake of discussing their development methodology--you just wouldn't have any leverage to demand changes.

however, i don't think Google has been hiding behind the beta tag to deflect criticisms for buggy software. i mean, if they had the track record of Microsoft then that would be a valid criticism. but so far Google has done a pretty good job of maintaining production-level quality even with Gmail.

and i don't think it's fair to use Gmail's beta status to dismiss Chrome's appropriate use of the beta label. after all, Chrome has only been out for 1-2 days so far.

that isn't to say that the problems with Chrome shouldn't be pointed out, just that it's not reason enough to discount Google's development method or judge the long-term outlook of this inchoate application this early on.

Re:It wont even install for me

[MightyYar]

I finally found a "Wow" application with it - 280 Slides. It's actually the first browser where it feels like you could really use it instead of Powerpoint (from a performance standpoint).

A way for them to stop CustomizeGoogle?

[CuteSteveJobs]

I use a Firefox Add-on called http://www.customizegoogle.com/ which blocks some of the methods Google use to profile users. It can also block Google ads (which I never click on anyway). I wonder if Google hasn't realized their vulnerability in not controlling the browser space. I'm guessing there's no room for CustomizeGoogle in their vision of the future?

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[MattCutts]

Hi TheJasper, that's my blog. Sorry if it came across as an advertisement. I knew that people would be interested in what communication happens between the browser and google.com, so I wanted to provide a list of all the communication so that people wouldn't worry. Even if something changed in the future, with an open-source browser people would immediately notice. The fact that Chrome is open-source lets anybody verify the code, and if they don't like it, they can take the code under the BSD license and do something different.

By the way, Google has already changed the language in the EULA that was mentioned in the summary, so people don't need to worry about that, either.

Re:It wont even install for me

[donnielrt]

Remember IE 1.0b? Or Netscape 1.0b? Or Safari 1.0b? Or Firefox 1.0b?

(Yes, I'm aware they're building on top off Webkit

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

So I take it you don't like open source software much, huh?

I love open source. However I don't equate it to untested crap. I've seen rock solid open source software.

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

In case you didn't know, software is complex. Modern web browsers are complex things even as examples of software.

In case you didn't know, being condescending reflects poorly on you.

Yes modern web browsers are complex. So's

Google has done unit tests, automated whole application tests, and even used the most popular web sites in their ranking system to test the thing. Now they're allowing people to use a free product in exchange for admitting the users are testing it.

They must have done one hell of a poor job, or I must have had terrible luck, given that I visited a half a dozen web sites and one froze, and another crashed the browser. It's not just about running a small number of unit tests against popular web sites and releasing it. If they're looking to kill off established browsers they'll have to do much much better.

Now they're allowing people to use a free product in exchange for admitting the users are testing it.

Sure it's a free beta. They owe me nothing. It's nice to have access to their browser. That doesn't mean I won't try it and make a decision as to whether I think it's a good product. I've already uninstalled it. Perhaps I'll look at their next release, if I find the features compelling and others report good usage. In the meantime thanks a lot for not uninstalling google update when I uninstalled the browser. My opinion of it is very very low at the moment.

It's much better, in my opinion, than charging someone $300 for something that should still be in alpha.

It's that attitude that leads to unusable buggy crap. Sure it's better than overcharging for bug infested software. But That's like telling someone on an assault charge that at least it isn't murder. Over-hyped buggy crap is bad. It is not to be encouraged!

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

There are those of us who consider something like Chrome to have value before it is perfect. If it is possible to have a year early in a buggy state, I'd like to check it out and use it in my plans.

I'd be fine if they called it what it is - ALPHA - and didn't overhype it. I'm not suggesting early release is bad. It is THEIR fault for playing so loose with the term beta.

If you don't like it try this: don't use it.

Already uninstalled.

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

Good software takes 10 years to write.

If you're going to try to sway me, you're better off not quoting Joel on software. I use to read some of his work, but I lost all respect for him very quickly, particularly since reading his story where he is proud rather than critical of the arrogance and lack of professionalism Bill Gates demonstrated when he was working for him.

There's a reason "mission critical" software costs millions of dollars to develop and license. And there's a reason that free software, for which it's impractical to spends millions of dollars on development, has a few warts.

A few warts? If flaws were warts, this browser would be a bush pig!!!

Nevermind the fact that a browser must be fresh -- if you don't support all the latest standards, you're useless; and if you do, then you are, necessarily, somewhat hastily developed.

More excuses for releasing buggy rubbish. Sorry, what I tested yesterday was Alpha. So was the last browser I tried (Safari on Windows). I'm very keen to dump Firefox and IE, but not in exchange for something unusable.

You wouldn't *want* to use a browser developed to operate to "mission critical" standards. It'd have a feature set comparable to Lynx.

I don't WANT to use this browser either. How about a happy medium instead of "mission critical". Test it on a wider set of web sites, and don't overhype it as an IE/FF killer? It's called being reasonable.

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

You don't work in the aircraft, spacecraft, power industry or telecommunications do you? There's no way to test everything economically.

It's not about testing EVERYTHING. I'm not complaining about obscure bugs. I'm complaining about crashing and hanging on the handful of sites I bothered to try.

No point in entering into discussion about the rest of your rant (complete with DNF reference). Yes sure you can take a long time and still come out with crap. So what? I'm talking about the standard a good company can achieve in a reasonable time. What I saw yesterday ain't it.

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

They tested it. It still has bugs. So they're releasing it as an open beta. This wasn't "in vogue" in the 90's... but these days, MANY things are released in a beta after the developers have been unable to find any bugs themselves.

Get some perspective. This was a public release overhyped and touting the product as an FF/IE killer.

When developers look for bugs, it's in alpha. When the developers cannot find anymore bugs, but they know it could benefit from many more eyes, computer configurations, etc... they release it as a beta. Once all the bugs are worked out, then it is golden and is released.

Mustn't have many developers. I managed to freeze it looking at 2 websites in under 5 minutes.

Google misuses the term "beta" and sometimes mean it as "we have more features planned for this until we're comfortable taking the beta label off"... think Gmail. But in this particular case, this is a true beta from Google. Expect bugs. If you don't want to help beta test the product, wait until it has been tested for a while and is fully released.

They're the ones who've created the confusion misusing the term. Also I'd argue this is ALPHA.

Should we also complain that the first beta version of IE8 had bugs in it? Sure, let's.

IE8 was not touted as a revolutionary new browser that would blow everything else out of the water. Nor does MS generally misuse the term beta. I haven't tried it, but with a solid lineage I bet it's less buggy than Google's offering.

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

I think the comparison is unwarranted - mission-critical embedded systems are orders of magnitude less complex than a web browser

Oh yes, the space shuttle is orders of magnitude less complex than Chrome.

I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your argument. What it comes down to is that you don't seem to comprehend the difference between a well componentized complex system and a simple one. You manage complexity by breaking it down, whether it's the shuttle or a web browser.

Nomen est omen, Stupid ?

[gd23ka]

"I think... I think he's trying to communicate with us, but I can't quite make out what he's saying."

I wonder, did your friends make an account for you on slashdot, stupidflanders (1230894)?

First time I saw the word 'guff' used myself here but tell you what I like it and I "get" it like most people here.

"Guff" the adjective smacks of the vomit covered bum whose worn, slitted and torn jeans flake
off tiny bits of urine crystals in a dusty mist as he limps along, The night before his pants soaked
up to full saturation with acidic piss after he had collapsed in a puddle of his own vomit and urine.
More of the same was subsequently added to by a group of teenage boys standing over him and
hosing him down with that urgent piss three six packs in an hour give you. While not detectable under
the assault of that incredible smell of rotten seafood boiled in uric acid, there is a hard and uncomfortable
turd that he can't part with no matter how hard the effort. A plug of feces that protrudes out of and chafes the
sensitive skin of his sweaty rosetta, as he walks down the street and with each step it dabs brown spots on
the remnants of his dripping wet and yellow underpants.

What a fitting adjective to describe anything Microsoft. Kudos to the inventor.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Goaway]

And how about "release early, release often"? Or how open source software has a much longer history of perpetual betas than Google?

Re:It wont even install for me

[syousef]

And how about "release early, release often"? Or how open source software has a much longer history of perpetual betas than Google?

"Release early, release often" doesn't mean release overhyped broken shit early and often. It means don't horde it until it's perfect. It means allow developers and early adopters access early. It does not mean suggest that the product is ready for production use by the masses.

Why the fuck is it that people seem to think open source is an excuse for writing and releasing garbage? The idea is to be able to fix bugs to IMPROVE the quality of the code, not to constantly release unusable crud.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Fri13]

"(not technically because Linux is just the kernel, but I will let that slide)"

Technically Linux is the operating system. At least if you follow computer science books literally.

Re:It wont even install for me

[Discoflamingo13]

Looking over what I wrote, I see that I failed to check it properly for my intended meaning - for that, I apologize. I should have said that testing the software in embedded systems is a less complicated process than testing desktop applications - with embedded systems, there are far more constraints on the chosen hardware platform, the input/output interfaces, and requisite expertise levels of the user. This doesn't mean that testing embedded systems is easy (it's not), it's just that the constraints are more rigorously defined, due to the "well-componentized" property that you describe in your response. A specification which is composed of rigorously defined constraints enable testers to tell the difference between expected normal system behavior and robust system behavior; when the space of possible inputs and outputs is large enough, testing all the possible paths through the code becomes a much more complicated process. I think it's very difficult to rigorously define all of the possible inputs/outputs of a desktop application, but that doesn't mean it's impossible - it just takes far more inventiveness and creativity to define the classes of inputs and outputs involved with human-computer interaction than it does when the interactions are computer-computer.

All of that being said, my limited experience with Chrome tells me that it was not sufficiently tested for even a cursory beta release, regardless of what the Scott McCloud comic says about how Google tests it.

Re:It wont even install for me

[BIGELLOW]

Get some perspective. This was a public release overhyped and touting the product as an FF/IE killer.

Get some perspective. That was the media, not Google. Google touted the browser concepts themselves as being innovative and having potential, they didn't tout this as a golden release. They even suggested that it likely wouldn't be widely adopted, but if Firefox and/or IE at least adopt some of the technologies themselves, it would be a win for everyone.

Mustn't have many developers. I managed to freeze it looking at 2 websites in under 5 minutes.

Good for you. You have a unique machine config. Everyone has a unique machine config. I've got a machine at work that, one day, started locking up regularly. Has something to do with disk activity. I eventually plan on starting from scratch again, reinstalling the OS. In the meantime, it's buggy. So, on that machine, Chrome is buggy and slows down from time to time. On my laptop, it works just fine and has never locked up. On my home machine, it also works well.

I suspect that on some machines it will lock up. On some machines it will crash. On some machines it will work perfectly. That's the point of a beta test. The developers can't have YOUR machine to test it on, so they release it to see what machines it might break on... what software it might have a conflict with... etc, etc, etc...

They're the ones who've created the confusion misusing the term. Also I'd argue this is ALPHA.

I agree that they created the confusion. It's unfortunate, though, that you'd argue that this is an alpha test. That's like saying, "I'd argue that I'm a Google Engineer working on the browser." I'd venture a guess that you aren't... and, thus, if you have been given access to it, and you're not a developer, I would then argue that it's a beta test. It's in the stage the development cycle says it is in, not based on the number of bugs a particular beta tester thinks it has.

IE8 was not touted as a revolutionary new browser that would blow everything else out of the water. Nor does MS generally misuse the term beta. I haven't tried it, but with a solid lineage I bet it's less buggy than Google's offering.

Maybe you need to start diversifying your reading list. I didn't read that it was touted as the best thing since sliced bread. I read that it was a Firefox killer... and I read that it would increase Firefox adoption... I read that it was an IE killer... and I read that it would hurt Firefox and help IE... I read that it was a piece of trash... and I read that it was sent from Heaven... I read a variety of things from different news sites and bloggers. What I read from Google, however, was that they are releasing a new browser and that they think it has some novel ideas in it. That they hope it will be widely adopted, or at least have its best technologies copied into other browser. They hope that browsers will become more powerful hosts for complex applications than merely HTML interpreters. So, maybe you need to diversify your reading list.

But, you're right. MS doesn't generally misuse the term beta. They misuse the term "golden" and "release". When IE7 was in beta, it never installed properly on one of my machines. Since then, that machine has never been the same. When the second build of the IE7 beta came out, I tried it again. It worked well enough. Then, when it was released, I started using it on all of my machines. It works well on my laptop, if not very slow. Firefox runs faster, but takes a long time to load initially. It also eats up a lot of memory with additional tabs. On my computer at work, IE7 locks up immediately upon running and never recovers. So, I am forced to use Firefox there. At home, IE7 runs ok, but Firefox is still faster.

I got so frustrated with the initial load time of Firefox that I installed a preloader. It loads Firefox in the background so it is always present in memory. Since Firefox seems to be such a memory hog, however, thi

Google rescinded the text

[mr_mischief]

There is now no wording of the claim to license your information in section 11 of the EULA at all.

The entire wording of section 11 is now this:

11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

It hasn't been moved anywhere else in the document, either.

not evil!

[David Gerard]

Google's new browser will do everything including making you a cup of tea. This is all paid for by personally-directed text ads in your tea leaves, based on analysing a DNA sample taken when you sip the tea and sending your genetic code back to Google for future targeting.

Not evil!

Re:Bullshit

[RegularFry]

Not bullshit. Read section 1.1.

1.1 Your use of Googleâ(TM)s products, software, services and websites (referred to collectively as the âoeServicesâ in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement)

Chrome is both a "product" and "software", no?

Not that big a deal

[aceofspades1217]

I mean the only reason that the TOS says all that crap because its taken straight out of their google eula. Sure its stupid of them to not tweak the eula considering its a application that isn't directly related to google. Obviously its acceptable for them to say for google services since it is their service.

I'm using chrome and I think its a pretty slick browser. Didn't take much getting used to and its fast and minimalist. I have a lightweight ultra portable laptop with a small screen so I prefer minimalism.

Sure it might not be the next super popular browser that overtakes FF. But its competition against IE and goes in a completely different direction than FF.

Thats why though none of us may use opera or safari (opera is pretty nice in its minimalistic sense though) they provide competition.

In the end can't we all agree that any competition to IE is great!

So cheers to google for providing new innovations which can always be food for thought for FF and can make IE seem even weaker.

Besides the comic was awesome :P

Re:Google sniffing your clicks

[aceofspades1217]

well...it is a beta...thats typically the problem with betas is that your a guinea pig.

But noone is stopping you from unchecking it and "usage statistics and crash reports" seems pretty standard if you ask me. Last time I checked firefox does that.

Re:forget the fine print - it's phones home like m

[MattCutts]

Just to reply directly to this comment: this code is part of the User metrics service and is *completely opt-in*. User metrics and crash reporting is very helpful to improve Chrome in the future, but it's off by default. So this code does not run unless you deliberately choose to run it.

Chrome

[rosoft2001]

While using Chrome I found that a lot of sites sites don't work, due to missing plugins for the new platform. Sometimes just quitting the site is not an option so I created an easy way to open the page in your "old" browser. Just drag and drop the URL from the Chrome URL bar into the Mirror form and you can continue your Chrome browsing. Download: http://www.zonator.com/mirror.zip