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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.'"

58 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Google Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Its icon looks like an anal bead.

    1. Re:Google Chrome by Fumus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      More like a pokeball to me...

  2. Well that sounds reasonable. by bigtallmofo · · Score: 5, Funny

    So far we've gotten an apology and a quick amendment that eliminates the offending clause. Now we just need for the group responsible for the oversight to be fired and one or two sacrificial killings and we'll call it even.

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
    1. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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
    2. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by prestomation · · Score: 5, Funny

      "We apologise again for the fault in the
      TOS. Those responsible for sacking
      the people who have just been sacked,
      have been sacked."

    3. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by enoz · · Score: 5, Funny

      "The directors of the firm hired to amend the TOS after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked."

    4. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by cdrudge · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by darthdavid · · Score: 3, Funny

      A moose bit my sister once.

    6. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by hahafaha · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by Konster · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's available for download on their main page. This seems to me that they really are releasing it to the public.

    8. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by eggnet · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What does the tilde mean? I've seen it a lot lately.

    9. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by prestomation · · Score: 3, Funny

      "No realli! She was Karving her initials Ãn the mÃÃse with the sharpened end
          of an interspace tÃÃthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law -an Oslo
          dentist and star of many Norwegian mÃvies: "The HÃt Hands of an Oslo
          Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge MÃlars of Horst Nordfink"... "

    10. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Some people are trying to make it a new punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm.

    11. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by Gyga · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
    12. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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>
    13. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by gschwim · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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??

    14. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by retchdog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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
    15. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by LordEd · · Score: 3, Funny

      Instead, this thread has been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.

      The Producers would like to thank The Forestry Commission Doune Admissions Ltd, Keir and Cowdor Estates, Stirling University, and the people of Doune for their help in the making of this thread.

      The Characters and incidents portrayed and the names used are fictitious and any similarity to the names, characters, or history of any person is entirely accidental and unintentional.
          Signed RICHARD M. NIXON

          JOHN GOLDSTONE & "RALPH" The Wonder Llama
          EARL J. LLAMA
          MIKE Q. LLAMA III
          SY LLAMA
          MERLE Z. LLAMA IX
          Directed By
          40 SPECIALLY TRAINED
          ECUADORIAN MOUNTAIN LLAMAS
          6 VENEZUELAN RED LLAMAS
          142 MEXICAN WHOOPING LLAMAS
          14 NORTH CHILEAN GUANACOS
          (CLOSELY RELATED TO THE LLAMA)
          REG LLAMA OF BRIXTON
          76000 BATTERY LLAMAS
          FROM "LLAMA-FRESH" FARMS NEARE PARAGUAY
          and (apologies to)
          TERRY GILLIAM AND TERRY JONES

    16. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by SillyPerson · · Score: 5, Funny

      Some people are trying to make it a new punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm.

      Sarcasm markup? Now, that's useful~

    17. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by Repossessed · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, the *code* is under a BSD license, one of the things about BSD style licenses is that the binaries can have whatever license you want (see OSX).

      --
      Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
    18. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by palegray.net · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Funny how their stuff routinely fails to fail...

    19. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by PReDiToR · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you don't like the thought of Google watching your every move, you could always try Scroogle.

      More information here and here.

      Firefox search plugin available too, but some links to it don't work.

      --

      Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
    20. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by kohaku · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, nothing helps make sarcasm funnier like explicitly stating that it's sarcasm~

      Fixed that for you.

    21. Re:Well that sounds reasonable. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Informative

      One of the key differences between the BSDL and the GPL is that the GPL has a clause saying that you may not impose any conditions on the code not present in the original license. This is what made it incompatible with the Apache license (v3 allows a small list of extra conditions you may impose). The BSDL allows you to take the code and distribute it in source or binary form, with or without extra conditions, as long as you retain the copyright notice. This is one of the reasons why things that are dual-licensed under the BSDL and the GPL are stupid - the conditions imposed by the BSDL are a subset of those imposed by the GPL, so you can trivially include BSDL code in a GPL'd work - no one would ever choose to use the work under the GPL because it grants them no extra rights.

      If you take a BSDL work and distribute it under a more restrictive license, then people are unlikely to actually use your code unless you modify it first, of course, since they can get the less-restrictive-licensed version and use that instead. If you make changes, people have to decide whether your improvements are worth giving up some rights in order to use. One example of this is a FreeBSD-derived operating system whose name escapes me at the moment which is used for router platforms. It is provided in binary-only form, and costs a small amount (I think it's free for individual use). If it has features you need that aren't in FreeBSD, then you can either pay someone to add them to FreeBSD, or buy a license for this platform and then be locked in to a single supplier for support.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. So do they... by Leptok · · Score: 5, Interesting

    relinquish rights to the stuff that may have been created before the update?

    1. Re:So do they... by Evanisincontrol · · Score: 4, Informative

      [so do they] relinquish rights to the stuff that may have been created before the update?

      No, they said that this change would be applied retroactively.

      ...right, and since "retroactively" means "Influencing or applying to a period prior to enactment", that would make the answer yes, not no. How did this get moderated informative?

  4. Now if only the uninstaller would really uninstall by GuyverDH · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you uninstall Chrome, it leaves a few google'isms behind...

    Like googleupdate and a few other registry entries... /sigh...

    time to reload Winbloze...

    --
    Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
  5. Re:TOS by Vectronic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  6. You must agree to.... [CLICK] by Nick+Driver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    See.... nobody, not even Google themselves ever reads the freakin' legal boilerplate crap you have to click on to install software.

  7. But.. by beaverbrother · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's open source. Just remove the terms of service and recompile.

    1. Re:But.. by Repton · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why is this modded "Funny"? The code is under a BSD license. You can do exactly that.

      Heck, I'm surprised there's no community project out there to provide an EULA-free Chrome fork.

      --
      Repton.
      They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
    2. Re:But.. by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Heck, I'm surprised there's no community project out there to provide an EULA-free Chrome fork.

      2 main reasons. Right now, Chrome is essentially Windows only, and as we know, most people who use Windows don't care about EULAs. And secondly, Chrome isn't used much, right now people are wondering if it is the future or nothing more then a nice experiment, if Chrome stays around then expect Debian to fork it like they did with Mozilla. If it dies, expect a very small fork to continue development of it.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    3. Re:But.. by Jangchub · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mod parent up. I played around with Chrome and was impressed at its speed (except for Pandora *vomits*) and was taken in by the minimalistic interface. I have no gripe with the awesome-bar or whatever lame title it has either. Once some extensions materialize for this (noscript/adblock) it's going to be a decent browser. I'm not too concerned about the memory usage as all my main machines are less than five years old. This might be a cake-and-eat-it-too situation if a community project forms to do as parent describes. It makes me wonder if someone at google is not only 'not being evil' but wants to do something benevolent.

  8. Re:TOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Sane legal system please?? by lcoscare · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Sane legal system please?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's never been used in court. There's no requirement that the courts approve every legal document before it's made public.

      This is already a major concern with EULAs, actually -- there are restrictions on how much you can really sign away, especially if it's a document that you don't sign, that nobody witnesses, that you only sort of have an opportunity to disagree with, and that everyone knows that nobody reads. Many clauses in EULAs are assumed not to be able to hold up in court. The likelihood that this one would be is slim at best (considering they have no way to track what information was posted using Chrome, that it's enormously wide-sweeping, and it's trivially circumvented by downloading the source and compiling).

    2. Re:Sane legal system please?? by LauraW · · Score: 4, Informative

      Can't we have a legal system that would just dismiss something so ridiculous and unreasonable???

      This actually happened just the other day. A court in Washington state struck down the AT&T long distance Terms of Service. The court ruled that the TOS was "'unconscionable,' meaning that no reasonable individual would have agreed to them had he or she realized their full scope." (quoting from the Ars Technica story).

      A PDF of the decision is here. The interesting bits seem to start around page 23 or so, though my eyes glazed over fairly quickly.

      -- Laura

  10. Re:What Will Firefox Fanboys Do Now? by hedwards · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:TOS by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:Now if only the uninstaller would really uninst by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  13. Don't be silly by David+Gerard · · Score: 5, Funny

    All this is scaremongering. Your confidential business data, bank account details, personal preferences in pornography, medical records and DNA sequence are strictly a matter between you and Google's marketing department, and no-one else. Remember, they're not evil!

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
    1. Re:Don't be silly by CorporateSuit · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't forget their HR department. When I applied at Google, things were going pretty well until I started searching for things like: Farting on Coworkers. Forging a Resume. Stealing Company Secrets. Where can I get a plague rat in Santa Monica? AIDS tests in Santa Monica. California Law and 'giving AIDS to coworkers'. Can I get arrested for giving AIDS to my coworkers? Can Google be brought down from the inside? How to bring down a company from the inside. Define: Arson.

      --
      I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
  14. Re:Now if only the uninstaller would really uninst by Fastolfe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Did you file a bug?

  15. fire them indeed by seanadams.com · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  16. Legality by RockMFR · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The uproar and resulting change by Google has me thinking - what is the legality of all of this?
    • Would the Chrome TOS hold any weight at all in a court?
    • Would the former section 11 hold any weight? Could Google really have claimed a license to anything sent via the browser? (or whatever)
    • Under the current section 11, is there any way Google could still claim a license on future submissions via the browser?
    • The blog posting says this is retroactive. Would this statement hold any weight if Google went on to claim a license to anything sent via the browser?
  17. Secret Sauce by TheModelEskimo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hmmm, let's see...

    1. Loudly complain about annoying features in the beta stage
    2. Watch as company removes said features because they're in vulnerable position
    3. Rinse and repeat on other products
    4. Realize why so many corporations fight for control of the media
    5. Start your own local newspaper
    6. ?
    7. Go out of business because nobody reads newspapers anymore, you moron

  18. Re:What Will Firefox Fanboys Do Now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  19. Re:TOS by conlaw · · Score: 4, Informative

    Corporations just don't copy and past legal stuff -- EVER.

    As a past member of three corporate legal departments, I'm ROFL at this quote. Most contracts start as boilerplate and only get changed through negotiation between the parties.

  20. Re:TOS by Merusdraconis · · Score: 3, Funny

    I have a copy of the PC game Morrowind whose EULA explicitly prevents me from using it.

    I'm pretty sure it's down to copy-paste.

  21. Re:What Will Firefox Fanboys Do Now? by Mandelbrot-5 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm running xp-64 and run Chrome just fine.

    --
    Math is like sex. People who get it are popular in class, people who don't are not.
  22. Re:What Will Firefox Fanboys Do Now? by onlysolution · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chrome works just fine for me on Vista64 and integrates very slickly with Aero Glass. If you look at the build requirements it lists the Vista SDK, so frankly I'd be pretty amused if it didn't work on on Vista.

  23. Re:What Will Firefox Fanboys Do Now? by RedWizzard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  24. Re:What Will Firefox Fanboys Do Now? by dennypayne · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you use Privoxy you can have Chrome with ad blocking as well. Works like a charm for me. Credit to this blog for pointing me in the right direction.

    Denny

    --
    Erecting the wall of separation between church and state is absolutely essential in a free society. - Thomas Jefferson
  25. Chrome code not public! by nephridium · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Chrome browser binary you can download is *based* on the Chromium source code, which is free (see http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-instructions-windows on instructions how to compile). The Chrome browser itself is NOT under the BSD license. I was quite disappointed when I realized that. - Just because they say "open source" somewhere doesn't make the Chrome browser itself open source.

    And what's this "installer" program to download the browser for you, why not just give us a download link to the browser itself? Furthermore, the browser will also *update* anytime it feels like it. Afaik there's no way to deactivate this *feature*.

    I'd love to see a site dedicated to compiling daily builds of the Chromium source code, maybe through in some forks by private fiddlers, because right now following the instructions from the link requires you to use a non open source tool "gclient" to download about 500MB of source and then compile it using M$ Visual Studio - and then hope it produces a working binary (oh, and have the time for this). So far I couldn't find anyone doing this and putting the binaries online yet - not even using google ;)

    --


    And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
    1. Re:Chrome code not public! by mr3038 · · Score: 4, Informative

      [...] right now following the instructions from the link [http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-instructions-windows] requires you to use a non open source tool "gclient" to download about 500MB of source and then compile it using M$ Visual Studio [...]

      Actually, it seems that gclient is open source (python source with Apache License 2.0) and you can get source for it with a simple
      svn co http://gclient.googlecode.com/svn/trunk gclient-dev
      For more information, see http://code.google.com/p/gclient/wiki/StartingDevelopment

      --
      _________________________
      Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
    2. Re:Chrome code not public! by Orphis · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'd love to see a site dedicated to compiling daily builds of the Chromium source code

      You can download snapshot of the latest version of Chromium for XP from the buildbot here : http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-xp/

    3. Re:Chrome code not public! by atomice · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'd love to see a site dedicated to compiling daily builds of the Chromium source code, maybe through in some forks by private fiddlers, because right now following the instructions from the link requires you to use a non open source tool "gclient" to download about 500MB of source and then compile it using M$ Visual Studio - and then hope it produces a working binary (oh, and have the time for this). So far I couldn't find anyone doing this and putting the binaries online yet - not even using google ;)

      As already mentioned the gclient tool is open source. Since its written in Python its distributed as source code anyway and the code is under the Apache 2.0 licence.
      As for 'hope it produced a working binary', I compile Chromium for the first time from SVN yesterday without any hitch whatsoever. And yes, my binaries are online.

  26. A bit off topic but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IMO this is evidence that Google has not developed any kind of interesting OS, otherwise the Linux version would have been out first. WHY?

    Any OS developed by Google would surely be non-windows based and likely linux-based with their intimate development expertise on that platform.

    With independent processes running each tab, and a lightning fast JS execution engine, the logical approach for OS development would be an active-desktopesque interface for KDE or Enlightenment or Gnome etc.

    Instead of having multiple desktops (which hardly anyone uses these days when u factor in mainstream use) you could have a multiple tabbed interface as default. Eg. user logs into OS and default is online javascript enriched interface on the default tab (which could be a static tab)
    Instead of other desktops - other tabs - all this WOULD be the desktop in JavaScript form, and it could access all OS features, eg. xterm, etc. but it wouldn't need to access the browser as this desktop would effectively be the browser - some form of Chrome.

    Moreover, the initial desktop would be highly customizable. A user could log in and immediately have a JavaScript enriched desktop tab with a google earth FRAME ebbedded in it, a google map FRAME embedded in it and a conventional HTTP FRAME embedded in it.

    The HTTP frame would be smaller than a conventional window and could be zoomed in and dragged around like in the ipod. This together with a Chrome version of Mozilla labs' Ubiquity (Ubiquity allows for streamlined net use -ie easily embedding a google map in a email and having it sent to your address book etc.) would provide a really excellent OS experience.

    But, if I thought of this then I'd say google labs did too, and there IS NO Linux version of Chrome yet so I must assume they are not far along in their desire to develop and OS, or at least an OS interface like KDE etc.

    IF, Chrome had been delivered first as an alternative to KDE, Gnome etc, I'd be excited but I don't think their utilizing / want to utilize it in this manner as yet.

    Paul