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Google Updates Chrome's Terms of Service
centuren writes "In response to the reaction to Chrome's terms of service, Google has truncated the offending Section 11, apologizing for the oversight. The new Section 11 contains only the first sentence included in their Universal Terms of Service, now stating: 'You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.'"
No, the OP had it right, its just an "outbreak"... saying a sudden outbreak is redundant.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/outbreak
Main Entry:
outbreak
Function:
noun
Date:
1602
1 a: a sudden or violent increase in activity or currency
b: a sudden rise in the incidence of a disease
c: a sudden increase in numbers of a harmful organism and especially an insect within a particular area
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+outbreak
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/outbreak
etc, etc...
See.... nobody, not even Google themselves ever reads the freakin' legal boilerplate crap you have to click on to install software.
Haven't you ever been lazy and just copy-and-pasted some code to somewhere else? Don't lie. That is probably what happened here~
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
It's open source. Just remove the terms of service and recompile.
They took the standard EULA that they use for everything, and slapped it on - it was the easiest thing for the programmers to do at the time, no thought required, just use the standard legal mumbo-jumbo. An understandable mistake, and they've corrected it.
Can't we have a legal system that would just dismiss something so rediculous and unreasonable??? You know, something to protect the people?? They could have put "by agreeing, we will assume the deed to your house", and I'm sure the number of downloads wouldn't have changed.
Umm, nice try troll. It was a genuine concern. The clause had the potential to be a huge land grab. It's hard to say whether it was an accident or they really got the message but it's been fixed. It's not the only time it's happened. I seem to remember both Apple and MS trying that sort of thing in the past, it's a bit easier to believe that Google just made a mistake though.
Firefox users are not going to switch to Chrome. It's just inane to suggest that's the case. It doesn't run on anything other than Windows at this point, and it looks like it's going to be a pain to be ported to anything else.
On the resource side of things, they're going to have to make a significant amount of improvement to be competitive with Firefox on performance. Sure web surfing is apparently faster, but that's against the 3.0 release and neglects the impact of memory hogging and the tweaks coming down the pipe in 3.1.
Or to put it another way, it's premature to suggest that Chrome is going to be stealing Firefox users. More likely they'll be stealing IE users away. Might very well slow adoptin of Firefox, but it's unlikely to make a significant impact.
Umm, that's what a boilerplate is for. For pretty much any other service they have it would have been fine. Or at least in keeping with the competition.
The only reason why it's a problem is because this is one of like two things they're providing where it's not appropriate. Google has a much larger number of projects for which a clause like that is pretty much mandatory to provide the service.
Almost any software program does that, why? Because the Windows registry is an absolute pain. Its like saying that apt-get remove still leaves some files behind. Unfortunately there isn't an apt-get purge function for Windows.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The thing is, the language itself was not the most offensive part of this.
What is most offensive is the way these bastards write these absurdly one-sided "agreements", assuming the benefit that if anything is unenforceable it will only selectively be struck, and just pass off their standard shit with every single product assuming nobody will ever read it.
Good thing we have the internets to call them on it this time, but shame on them for doing it in the first place. And not just google, but damn near every tech company. The only reason they fixed it was because the high profile of the product. It's still evil.
Sure I've copied/reused code. But when I do I usually make sure I understand what it does and works correctly. I also don't work for a mega corporation that has entire brigades of lawyers to get paid to look at these very things. Google apparently didn't understand what it meant nor had any of the many lawyers who get paid to look at these types of things actually look at it.
That's not the only thing that prevents Firefox users from using chrome. The other two big things are the lack of add-ons and Windows exclusivity, both subject to change. As soon as Chrome has a decent enough equivalent to Adblock and Noscript, and maybe better keyboard-only navigation, I'll be all over it.
The cynics may say that they only backed down from their powergrab due to the media attention, the optimists may say that they did it because Google always listen to their customers, and the rest of us may not care *why* they did it, either way we finally get a cool new browser to play with, without risking our privacy in the process, and there's one less stupid EULA in this world.
Now, if only Apple would let me use iTunes to develop biological WMDs...
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Spamming every news and discussion board on the Net with fake hysterics over that simple cut and paste mistake was the only thing the Firefox fans could try to do to stop the flood of people dumping Firefox for Chrome?
I still can't picture Chrome actually causing a 'flood' of people instantaneously dumping any browser. It's neat, but not that exciting.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Do keep in mind that the thing is barely in beta. They're not really releasing it to the public. Besides, it's basically unenforceable, since the code is under a BSD license.
Then you apparently didn't make much use of plugins.
Ok, Ok, I'll stop
As long as IE uses MSN by default no one can complain. People actually have to take action to use this product. If Google were to force people to use Chrome in order to search it would be leveraging.
I don't preview or spellcheck.
Yeah, nothing helps make sarcasm funnier like explicitly stating that it's sarcasm.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Really? Reasonable? The only reason they responded was for PR purposes. Corporate lawyers are paid to protect the interests of the company, not copy and paste boilerplate.
They knew exactly what they were doing. The didn't get away with it. End of story.
Just because something is "free" doesn't mean you have to give your rights away. What is this world coming to??
Firefox users are not going to switch to Chrome. It's just inane to suggest that's the case. It doesn't run on anything other than Windows at this point, and it looks like it's going to be a pain to be ported to anything else.
The vast majority of Firefox users are running Windows. I don't see the lack of other platforms making much difference here.
Or to put it another way, it's premature to suggest that Chrome is going to be stealing Firefox users. More likely they'll be stealing IE users away. Might very well slow adoptin of Firefox, but it's unlikely to make a significant impact.
The factor you seem to be ignoring is that Firefox users are more likely to be early adopters. So I think they are more likely to at least try Chrome.
That's because MSN search quite frankly sucks. It's a reasonable decision from the perspective of marketing, not to even offer a bottom-barrel service as an option. If MSN were better, it would be an option.
And Microsoft knows it. There's a reason MS tried to buy Yahoo!, and put forth such a serious offer that it caused a small political drama in the Yahoo! board of directors when Yahoo! refused...
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
More like a pokeball to me...
Firefox, Opera, and Safari don't have a monopoly, and aren't controlled by Google.
I don't preview or spellcheck.
Good job Google, now I will actually give your browser a whirl.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Why's isn't Chrome's source readily available? Instead, "Chromium", the OSS project that Chrome is "based off of", is open. That's a distinct difference to me. Is no one else skeptical?
Oh, for the love of God. Either you believe that they're actually providing the source or you don't. If Google was explicitly saying that this was the Chrome source code, you'd be crying, "But how do we know that's the source they really built it from????". Ridiculous.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
It's icon is same as Microsoft Windows Media 9, look at what I have on my Windows Vista Uninstall dialog: http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chromevswindowsmediais8.jpg