Burned by Chrome - Fire put out

Update - Google amends Chrome EULA (Updated 4 Sep '08 0830 GMT) Google has amended section 11.1 of the Chrome EULA so that it now reads: 11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. There are now no other sub-sections in section 11 …

[Santa]

Could be a boo-boo

This has the look of being a boo-boo...

I'd say it's a copy and paste job of the terms and conditions from an online service (hence "using this service" and they didn't proofread properly...

So the T&C are in Beta too! ;-)

[Dr Who]

Mushed be shum mishtake

This must be a clause that slipped in from some other Google licence. The use of the word Service (which gmail for example is but which Chrome is not), suggests that someone has been over-enthusiatic with their cutting and pasting from another EULA.

If the clause is intentionally there, then it still makes no sense, because as already mentioned Chrome is not a service. It's a piece of software.

You should still worry about stuff you send via gmail or upload to Facebook, but I suspect that it will transpire that this clause is either a mistake, or it is unenforcable because it is meaningless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do no evil?

As more than one blogger has already pointed out today, it's "don't be evil". Apparently there's a subtle difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure?

"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."

Are you sure and certain that these Additional Terms for Chrome don't cancel this "right"?

If it doesn't, Chrome will be *illegal* to use in France which doesn't allow the assignation of copyright.

[Joe K]

Nice

Whats that, 24 hours?

Quicker than i expected for it to crash and burn, and leave it to the lawyers to kill it stone dead too.

[Ian]

not actually evil...

but very very naughty! Ah well, at least that simplifies my decision on whether to use Chrome or not....

NOT!

mine's the coat with the half written novel in the pock....hang on, Google nicked it!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Strangely.....

...I seemed to know this was the case even before reading the article ;-)

Haven trusted google for years, but their search engine is good! Only recently, on a Reg readers advice, have I started using scroogle. Cheers to that person!

[Pete Randall]

How does it identify that content?

How does Google work out just what that content is except where such things have been directly posted to Google owned machines? A cynic might suggest that Chrome keeps a record and reports it back to Google....

[Christoph]

Hardly news

That one has happened a *lot*.

What probably happens is:

* They need (genuinely) a licence to use the information to make the system work. For instance a blog site has to have a licence to display what the users have typed into their blogs.

* Someone gets their pet lawyers to draft the licence terms as widely as possible to make certain they are covered in every possible situation.

* But nobody checks to see whether they have drafted it too widely, so it claims far too many rights, often to a ludicrous extent.

* Although they boast of their experience in the business, none of them know that this has happened many times before with exactly the same problems and consequences.

* They publish the licence terms and are genuinely surprised that there are screams of outrage.

* They deny that there is any problem.

* After making sure by their intransigence that it is a public relations disaster they eventually back down, as little as possible, and without ever acknowledging that they cocked up.

And in this case they seem to have added:

* They copy the standard licence terms to an application where those terms make even less sense than they did in the first place.

[John]

EULA copied from Google Docs?

Sounds like they've copied the license text from another service where it might have been vaguely sensible. It doesn't make any sense at all in a browser. Shame - Chrome has some nice features and is certainly very fast, in the brief play I've had with it. The Google folks just need to sort their heads out.

[David Harper]

Chrome is already banned where I work

Our sysadmins have already circulated an email this afternoon forbidding anyone from installing Google Chrome, citing clauses 11.1 and 11.4 of the EULA as the reason, and adding: "The issue of information rights and the protection of information is important and cannot be over-emphasised."

[David Webb]

Service?

I'm not sure a browser can be considered a "service", maybe it means Google services you access via Chrome?

[Liam]

not an issue...

since on the 2 machines ive tried it on it manages to crash and burn before its done much. i just get a lovely dead tab icon.

now, why the hell do i get this on 2 very different xp machines??? is the question!

[greg]

bullshit

Well here's one IT admin who will be banning Chrome entirely from his network, and downplaying it over-zealously to anyone who dares mention it.

Aside from that MASSIVE downside, it's not a bad browser.

[alex dekker]

"the Services"?

What are "the Services" you speak of?

[Webster Phreaky]

Once Again, TOO BIG For Their Britches, Google Boys ARE Emperors

The Cosmological Constant of Large Lumps of Shit will coalesce in one place, the Frisco "Bay Area", where the over-bearing obnoxious arrogant jerks like those at Google and Apple, Intel, Adobe truly believe that you're rights are theirs to step all over .... and you pay them a premium while they're at it too.

When will the masses of Kool Aid Drinkers just learn to say no to these a-holes?

[DiskJunky]

hmmm

why am I not surprised?

[JimHigson]

GPL violation!!

Doesn't this violate the GPL?

I assume Google are creating Webkit derivatives under the GPL licence?

[Bruno Girin]

No chrome then

I was going to install Chrome to see what all the fuss was about but I think I'll abstain now.

If Google was expecting Chrome to challenge IE, that's not a very good start...

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is more about giving google the right to modify data between you and webservers (ala sticking targeted adverts all over your viewed webpages, whether the owner of the website wants them or not) than it is about usage of published content, but even so -

No thanks.

[Simon Hildreth]

Old news

We all had a jolly good laugh about this in IRC yesterday... just get Chromium, hack in adblock + your favourite extensions and away you go.

[Alastair Dodd]

Not clever Google

Due to this and the carpetbombing vulnerability that it has it's been banned from our work network already - but anyway you shouldn't test beta software in a work environment really anyway

[Kev B]

Clause 11.2 is a 'Bad Un' as well

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organisations 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

So they could then pass your "your content" onto other parties ? For example I upload an image to my blog page via chrome . Google can then take that image and pass it onto a third party ?

[Andrew]

Oh Joy

Another piece of software stealing your rights away. Wait, isn't just using windows doing that anyway?

[Teoh Han Hui]

Services

Could "Services" refer to the Google web apps instead of Chrome?

[Anonymous Coward]

storm in a teacup...

This is taken straight from the license for google's other services, where it actually makes a bit more sense. It is a standard T&C for any web based forum/service where users upload content for public viewing. For example, sourceforge includes the exact same T&C. I expect that google's lazy lawyer folk couldn't be arsed to read/update their standard boilerplate.

Clearly, google need to make it clear that it doesn't apply to private content uploaded/posted to 3rd parties using chrome.

[Kris]

Getting sick of google

I find myself distancing myself more and more from google. I just find they are too interested in too much information and its not so much that I don't trust them (why would i, they are basically just another faceless company) but I worry more about what would happen if the info changed hands, say under government pressure.

Add that to this whole content thing and yeah, to much power/information at one spot. So yeah, Chrome will be given a miss.

[Anonymous Coward]

impressive

the browser is cool, fast, nice. all the eula stuff will not stop people from using it, and the devs to start testing on it, and recomend it... it will be a very hard time for fx i think...

btw a new icon is necessary here! you know, the bad, the good and the ugly... google guy!

[Anonymous Coward]

FFS

I'll need my extra-long barge pole for that browser then.

Do no evil? You can f* right off Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

How will Google know?

Unless this puppy is phoning home about everything you're doing.

Alien because E.T. likes to phone home doesn't he

[Anonymous Coward]

Displaying ?

"or displaying the content"

So just viewing someone else's web page with Chrome means that you give these rights to Google? And warrant that have the right to do so. Which you don't. Therefore you are in breach of the license and so you have to stop using it. Bizarre.

[twelvebore]

Why...

...is this a surprise? Why do people think Google is spending time and money to build a web browser? Google search works fine in existing browsers. What possible use could a Googlebrowser be if this was only about peddling data they already have their hands on?

[Albert]

post or display

So, if I display something in Chrome I am saying I own the right to it and I give Google the right to what every they wish with it.

Does this mean if I browse the whole of Microsofts website I am giving it to Google.

Do no evil - my arse

Countdown to retraction....

[Mike]

All your stuff are belong to us

Yeh, right.

[Dan]

Services as in gmail etc.

Whilst it is deplorable to have such a clause in pretty much any kind of contract, I cannot help but think that they mean services such as google docs and gmail etc instead of everything done using chrome. I know that you have to be very specific when it comes to legal contracts and this is worded very poorly if I am correct, but this won't have been entirely on purpose for everything done using the browser..

[Baldychap]

errrrr...

So...as webpages are 'displayed' though it's shiny new browser is google therefore saying it now owns the whole web??

Nice try guys.

[The BigYin]

I will not be touching chrome...

...until that clause is gone and it stops sending data back to mummy.

Google is the new evil empire.

[moronatwork]

Another reason not to use chrome

about:plugins

ActiveX Plug-in

File name: activex-shim

ActiveX Plug-in provides a shim to support ActiveX controls

[pctechxp]

that logo

looks like HAL's eye (probably stating the bleedin' obvious)

I wont be installing Chrome because I hate Google with a passion.

[Edward Barrow]

Lazy lawyering

It's obviously a cut-and-paste job from another licence; it will be changed when someone with a commercial brain talks to the lawyer who did it.

[dervheid]

They can shove their 'chrome'

up the orifice that the sun shineth not.

Chancing fucking bastards.

Methinks they have gone TOO far this time.

I WAS going to give this a try, but having read the EULA, they can get stuffed.

Gits.

Time to 'De-Google'.

[Craig]

Para 11.2

Surprised that para 11.2 isn't included in the article:

"11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organisations 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 short, they can take your data and pimp them to the highest bidder.

Yay for Google's fair and liberal EULA...

[Paul]

expect this to be fixed

This clause is unlikely to survive a legal challenge - it's manifestly unreasonable.

More to the point, this seems like a generic licence Google use for all their online services. The clause is unlikely to survive the first common sense review within the Googleplex, now that the problem has been pointed out.

Where's the google-with-a-halo icon (or the one with horns)?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...

They manage to produce a really good browser that's just what's needed - and then reinforce all the worst fears about what their intentions are with this appalling copyright grab. It'll be banished from here forthwith, and not reinstalled until they get real. Thieving gits.

[Chris]

As I said earler...

I don't like Google's 'fcuk you, we OWN you' attitude.

This is unacceptable.

And it's not going on any system I have anything to do with unless Google backs down and stops trying it on.

[steogede]

EULA

It is a good thing somebody reads these things. I look forward to hearing Google's response.

[Anonymous Coward]

Conceptual

EULA realy sucks. Moreover, who would want a browser from a company that Simply Places Ads for Money. I see a risk in it...

[Will Godfrey]

and I agree with the 'blogger above'

100%

What happens to those of us who have material on the net with a CC-BY-NC-SA license?

Someone actually likes my work (well it could happen) and downloads it from *my* website using Google's *browser* making it effectively Google's property. That doesn't even begin to make sense.

Is that the orgasmic cry of a thousand lawyers I hear?

[Richard]

Not only MS and Google

Adobe tried this a while ago with some version of Photoshop, where they tried to do a rights grab uploaded to Adobe's online photogallery via this software. They got shot down in flames for it.

[Chris iverson]

So they have right to my data

But do I have a right to theirs. I didn't think so. Therefore Chrome has become a view only browser for me. And all my tasty copyright work goes up through firefox.

Its the long one with the hat. They are watching you know

[Eddie]

Nothing too new here, just the mechanism

This is google, what did you expect?

They are trying to out-Microsoft Microsoft, in terms of extracting every bit of juice out of their "clients".

A while back, I looked at what I got from google, and what they got from me. The equation didn't look too good, so I switched to alternatives to all of their services - e.g. Scroogle, Mapquest/Streetmap, that copy of Photoshop light I got with my scanner, and so on. We do have a choice, so you know, work out what you want to do. I can't stop the government patternising me, but I can take measures to avoid worse folk, like google (at least the government can have a stab at justification for storing all the data on me on slightly better grounds than filling Sergey's wallet)

I avoid them like the plague, personally...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google owns the internet now

> By [...] displaying the content, you give Google a [bunch of rights to] any Content that you [...] display through [Chrome].

> You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence.

Yes Google, I own the entire internet and I can give you rights to every webpage I view in your browser... NOT.

Paris cos, well I guess Google owns that icon now...

[Jeff Rowse]

This is a new "problem"?

Didn't Adobe try exactly the same with their online "red-eye removal" tool, and some of the gubbins within Photoslop Elephants (as in, once you let Adobe have it, they will never forget...)

Mine's the one with "Those who fa_l to learn from h_story are doomed to repeat _t" printed in red...

[Anonymous Coward]

What a shame!

I used Chrome last night and saw how good it will be with a bit of evolution. It was fast and simple once I got used to it. However, now I've seen the EULA I'm afraid I'm not going to use it again. I am sure that Google doesn't give a toss about that but it's their loss, not mine.

[fraser smith]

Burned by Apps

Apparently, that's the standard Google Docs EULA. I wonder why no-one has spotted it before. It applies to Google Docs, regardless of the browser in use.

[Bez]

Confusing? Not half...

Note section 9.4:

"Other than the limited licence 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 that subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist)"

Section 11 does seem to suggest it is a rights grab solely for the use of promoting Google Services (you omitted the closing sentence "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.") but it doesn't seem terribly clearly written.

However, that EULA appears to apply to all Google's services. And presumably that means Google has sneaked itself the right to publicly display everyone's Gmail content to the world (if only to promote Gmail - which seems unlikely, "use Gmail, look what we do with your emails!"). Surely all your KML belong to Google and it also pwns all your photos on Picasa. And since in 11.2 "You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organisations or individuals" then anyone can ask Google for it. Seems at odds with 9.4.

I'm also curious about the term "display" - what constitutes "displaying" something via Chrome? On first read, I took it to mean displaying web pages - which, unless I'm looking at my own website, are clearly never my IP to hand over in a EULA. Either "display" means something I can't fathom, or the EULA is nonsensical if you want to use Chrome to look at the Internet.

I'm not a big conspiracy theorist so I'm assuming it's a well-intentioned EULA with a couple of misleading (but technically dangerous) bits in it. And IANAL so there's a good chance I just can't interpret legalese properly. It would be nice to have a lawyer give their view...

[Anonymous Coward]

logging?

How will Google know which content is posted to the net using Chrome, and not with some other browser?

It seems to me Google will need to record/log everything that is sent to the net via Chrome, in order to determine which content is posted by Chrome.

In addition, in order to exercise their rights under that clause of the EULA, they are going to have to analyse the data they have logged.

That would presumably mean that the contents of every web mail, forum posting etc. are eventually sent to Google for analysis and storage.

How can Google use the right that clause provides, without logging and copying the data?

[Nigel Wright]

LOL - There's no such thing as a free lunch

And Google's not free.

[Lupus]

So let me get this straight...

If I were to use Chrome to upload, say, a novel i was working on, to anybody, Google would now have free reign to do with it as they like?

If I wrote a short story, put it on the webs, and someone else VIEWED it ("any Content that you submit, post or **display** on or through the Services"), same deal?

How worrisome.

[David Gosnell]

Boilerplate licence?

Sounds stunningly similar to that boilerplate licence Adobe put on their on-line photo editor, which they changed without blinking when the privacy flaws were pointed out. Probably the same deal - will wait to see what Google have to say to the matter before getting too scared.

Chrome's a nice browser, and a superior alternative to Apple's bloatware for those of us who for whatever reason need to have a WebKit browser on the desktop.

[Gavin]

Google becoming microsoft?

Is it just me or is the Chrome logo rather similar to microsofts windows logo?

Instead of 4 colours arranged in a square flag (red, green, blue, yellow) google has the exact same colours, only arranged in a ring.

Coincidence? Or a sign that Google is also morphing into a do lots of evil beast?

this post is made from Chrome, and google can happily distribute it if they wish.

[Andrew Moore]

MS Passport

I remember the same condition appearing in Microsoft Passport shortly after they bought HotMail.

[Steven Hunter]

Just once...

Just once I want to see an EULA that includes the line:

"We claim the exclusive rights to your DNA and all works derived there-from."

And then the Google-copters show up to take your children off to work in Google's acid mines.

[Nick]

Infinite Power

Software companies seem to think if you use their software they should have almost unlimited rights and control. Imagine if you bought a pen and one of the conditions of use was that you must send the manufacturer a copy of everything you write with it which they have the right to do anything they want with. This would not be considered acceptable. Why is it considered acceptable in a EULA?

[amanfromMars]

Just Hold On a Mo, Pardner...... Not so Phreaking Fast.

Nowhere in that Google Chrome EULA does it say a right to benefit monetarily from any Displayed Third Party Content which is Right for that Benefit belongs to the Author/Inventor of the Content ..... ie Source.

Google will be required to Obtain from them a Permission and a License if they wish to make Money Too.

Strewth, .... You can't expect Google to be Dumb enough to Think that Beta Ideas come for Free. Hell, the Crazy System has Everyone Paying for Everything with Pieces of Paper so Sign over Some Paper for Anything Used which is not In-House Reared. Anything else will be Grand Theft Imagination and Invention.

It is not as if Google don't have a Wad to Spend...... so Spend IT and Accumulate Top Notch Top Gun Programmers who Know how to Create NeuReal Virtualised Markets for Google to Server with Content and Product Placements. Hell, that Better than being Able to Print Money, Creating Things from Money for Money to be Spent On.

[TimM]

Google's Services only

Refers to "Google's" service. As defined here:

"1.1 Your use of Google’s products, software, services and websites (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."

Fairly sure that definition does not mean the whole of the web is suddenly Google's "services" just because you use their browser.

Thus this is just a fuss over nothing as it's only referring to posting to Google's own services (and I bet is probably the same as the EULA they've always had for their own services).

Plus I would have thought that no EULA that would imply this would stand up in court as it cannot replace your statutory rights and local laws (especially EU privacy and copyright laws). Indeed, no EULA agreement can take away your copyright in the UK. Though it can grant use, but copyright always remains with the holder unless explicitly signed away. Anyway, an EULA that is almost certainly not read in full would not be enforceable when it comes to signing away copyright.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably should have posted this before ...

Google doesn't have an OS in which to "package" Chrome. So, why oh why did they think the world needed yet another browser?

Did their market research suggest that a certain percentage of 'net users would plump for Chrome no matter how pointless it is?

[Nìall Tracey]

How does this....

...tie up with the concept of "open source"?

Is this a new part of the BSD license?

Am I entitled to strip out this condition when I recompile the binaries?

Will these conditions be imposed on every FOSS project that imports code from the Chrome codebase?

In the end though, the license surely couldn't be upheld in court.

Why? "any Content that you ... display" -- that's why. So by viewing Doctor Who via BBC iPlayer on Chrome, I am granting Google a license to use Doctor Who in perpetuity, and saying that I'm liable? And the same for any other website I "display" via Chrome?

Even the least technologically-aware judge on the planet would see how this is incompatible with the concept of the internet. Because basically viewing anything other than Wikipedia and Google's own pages would make you criminally liable for fraud.

[AndiTails]

_S_ervices - the capital gives it away

The text is talking with reference to Google Services, i.e. Docs, YouTube, Blogger, etc. and what you make public.

It doesn't mean everything and anything you do in the browser..

I think in general it has a bit of away to go to push my FF3 install out from default.

It doesn't maximise correctly on my multi-screen (multi-res) setup for a start. Grr.

It does make a nice 'Google Apps' browser though. Especially with its App-pop-out desktopy bit (but you could do that with 'Bubbles' anyway.. erm, Google for it (irony!))

Paris - cos she would probably mis-read the small print too. If she even bothered to read it that is..

[Bob]

For the record...

It's not just chrome that has this blurb. The global Google terms of service do too in regards to posting your stuff through 'the services.' So any entries over Google's blog, google video, Picasa the imagehost, etc, fall under this as well.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy_terms.html

[Anonymous Coward]

HAL9000

bye!

[Ken Hagan]

It's OK folks...

"This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services ..."

This text appears in the very same clause. There's a general legal principle that you don't write a sentence into an agreement unless you intend it to have some meaning. Unless English is *very* different on that side of the pond, this sentence would appear to place severa limits on the IP rights claimed earlier in the clause. Basically, Google are claiming whatever IP rights they need in order to do the job of displaying pages in your web browser.

The later clause, where you assert that you have the rights Google need, means that Google can't be shot down if you use their browser to view someone else's copyrighted content.

[Thomas Greenwood]

Uninstaller Message

That explains why Google asks "Was it something we said?" when you uninstall Chrome from the start menu!

[Blacklight]

It's not just "Chrome"

It's ALL of Google's services :

GMail

Websearch

Translate

Docs

Finance

Picasa

etc

etc

etc

If you use Google anyway, you're already subject to these TOS...

[Michael Sheils]

It's just a carbon copy of there net apps eula

It will just be some stupid peon screwing up, there is no way they would be that stupid as to expect this to fly, also there is no way for them in the code to pull it off.

[Jim T]

Well, I didn't accept this eula.

It looks like the eula's only on the website, but I downloaded the installer through a direct link to the exe and was completely unaware that it existed.

Also the eula wasn't shown during the install.

So they don't have an agreement from me on this copyright, and presumably many others - so it's a worthless document.

Still, I've uninstalled it on principle, pending proper clarification, can't be having that, even if it is supposed to be for promotion of the browser (no you can't use my confidential company data in your screenshot).

[MG]

The dark side...

...or just inexcusable incompetence? Who knows, but this bit made us laugh:

"13.2 If you want to terminate your legal agreement with Google, you may do so by (a) notifying Google at any time and (b) closing your accounts for all of the Services which you use, where Google has made this option available to you. Your notice should be sent, in writing, to Google’s address which is set out at the beginning of these Terms."

So now if you no longer want to use Chrome you need to ask for Google's permission in writing?

Paris because we don't have to lift a finger to get shafted....

[Lee Jackson]

I dont understand!

Does this mean if I upload a picture to Facebook Google can somehow track this, and use it????

[Jared Earle]

Beta

The EULA is obviously still in beta as it's copy/pasted from elsewhere.

Storm in a teacup, folks. Move on, nothing to see.

[Misha Gale]

How does google know you used Chrome?

So if Google gets a licence to use the photos you post on Flikr, or the tracks you upload to Myspace, how do they know which of the zillions of photos and tracks on those sites were posted by users of Chrome?

Either (a) There is spyware built in to Chrome which keeps track of what content you post and where (unlikely, since the code is open source) or (b) they don't know, except for those services google already own, like Youtube, where they can check the user-agent strings. I suppose it's also possible that (c) Google will subpoena Flikr/Myspace/whoever for the User-agent strings from their server-logs, but I doubt that even the DMCA allows for this.

And if it's (b), isn't this clause in the T's & C's of youtube et al already? So why do they need it in the browser as well?

Still waiting for that google-with-horns comment icon...

[John]

Use your brains!

This is much to do about nothing. The terms have been there since at least last year and has nothing to do with Chrome specifically. http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy_terms.html Look at the date at the bottom. April 16, 2007... well over a year ago. Did you go up in arms then? No. Do you think its possible to display search results without having perpetual rights to display them? Use your brain.

[Law]

Bit slow today arn't we?

This was splashed all over the net almost instantly when I got into work this morning! Granted, I don't get into work until 10am but still! :)

I've been thinking about this all day, it might be a lazy mistake, it might be deliberate - but I'm not sure I am comfortable with Google having a cut&paste EULA as serious as this one, even if they don't bother enforcing it. I'm considering pulling my gmail and calendar accounts because of Chrome. Shame really, since I love my gmail account - I just never read the EULA when I first got it, will have a look this afternoon to see if they can sell of pages of emails to the highest bidders!

Something release by them that I was never bothered with pushing me to stop using the bits I am bothered about... odd end to my relationship with them, I always assumed it would end in some major catastrophe, like them deleting my gmail history accidentally, suing someone like AdBlockPlus, or Android bringing down human civilisation.

[Chronos]

Re: GPL violation!!

The source is under a BSD licence so, no, it doesn't violate the GPL. WebKit is dual licensed (BSD/LGPL). There is nothing in the Chrome code that is GPL only except for Win32 pthreads, which is LGPL and non-viral.

Remember, the GPL is far from the only licence that can be considered safely open source. The OSI has a full list of them.

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

That said, this is going nowhere near my machines. I guarantee worlds of pain for anyone trying to sneak it in. Remember that costing you wrote? I hope you do because you have to start again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mistake

Tinfoil hats off.

They exaggerated a statement designed to cover their own asses. They weren't trying to steal your blog images. I'm sure this will be resolved over the next day or two. If not, the gloves will come off.

[Tony W]

Mistake but will they change?

Lawyers will always try to screw the customers, it's up to the customers to tell the management they won't put up with it. When I joined what was then Telewest (now Virgin Media) they had a similar clause for use of their personal home web pages. I and a few others protested and they changed the wording.

[Sam]

Abort

No better than phorm.

Arseholes.

[Adam Williamson]

Generic license

From the wording of the license it's a very generic license that wasn't really drawn up specifically for Chrome, it's one Google probably use for a lot of other services (hence the very generic language and the description of a web browser as "the Services"). Given that Google is more in the web services market - where this kind of term is more commonplace, though I don't know why we let people get away with it... - it kinda makes sense that they have it in their generic license. They should really get it taken out for a *web browser*, though.

[Sol Young]

Looking forward to this one getting corrected

This better be a beta issue. Either that or Google's hiring standards are really taking a dive.

[martin burns]

IT Admin bans?

When did IT Admins get themselves qualified to judge based on legal matters?

Non-fixing of the carpet bombing is fair enough game, but do try to stay in areas on which you have a valid opinion.

The one with the "Cockups are more probable than Malice" badge on the lapel, ta.

[James Anderson]

Redefine evil.

new wiktionary entry for "evil" -

noun. Action injurious to Sergie Brins bank balance; Action injurious to Googles market share; Action of generosity which do not directly increase googles reputation or fullfill googles buisness goals.

[Anonymous Coward]

And we expect anything other than this sort of behaviour from the GoogleBeast...?

I really am starting to think that MS have passed on their Monster mantle to the world gobbling ad server behemoth from Mountain View.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome Crawler?

Chrome is rather nifty with amazing performance in Google Mail (no surprise there).

Worryingly more than one PC now exhibits sustained drive activity, for extended periods, when Chrome is running. The drive activity ceases immediately that the Chrome process is terminated via the Task Manager.

Is Chrome crawling our drives?

We won't be using Chrome again until the drive activity is explained/disabled.

[gothicform]

Banned

Well Google just guaranteed I won't be using it and no one I employ will. As if we are going to give rights to Google for everything uploaded over the web. The value of what they'd be getting would be millions a year.

[Sol Young]

What does this even mean?

"...Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services."

What does that even mean? In the EULA, section 1.1 identifies "Services" as:

1.1 Your use of Google’s products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the “Services”...

[Tim]

Services

Read the whole thing, not just what's in the article. "Services" refers to software and programs as well as online services - it's right at the start of the EULA. It includes Chrome. It's probably in there to allow you to work legally in the cloud. Can anyone on here with access to Salesforce.com see if they have a similar license?

BTW it's a bit slow but it's nice having gmail in its own window without an address bar. So good for that, but not as slick as Firefox for general browsing.

I doubt Google will use this piece of user-generated content in promoting the service.

[Chronos]

Re: Once Again, TOO BIG For Their Britches, Google Boys ARE Emperors

"When will the masses of Kool Aid Drinkers just learn to say no to these a-holes?"

No idea about them, but I swore off Google when the devil (you know who you are, Old Nick) convinced me of their ulterior motives. That was ages ago.

No, I'm not going batty and hearing voices. On Usenet, specifically uk.r.a, you can be whoever the hell you like.

Poison. 'nuff said.

[Andrew Moore]

Burning Chrome

William Gibson wrote a short story about a high class prositute and brothel owner who was taken down by hackers.

The name of the prostitute: Chrome...

[david]

Youtube

It's the YouTube document - read 6C

[Psmith]

Re: Scroogle

Um, you perhaps should have mentioned that it was scroogle.org, and not scroogle.com, as the one is a usefull search tool and the other is, um, NSFW!!!!

[unfunk]

what's the opposite of hyperbole?

..because that's exactly what all this is. Trying to find fault in what's bound to become a huge player in the Browser market, and you can only find something in the EULA (that doesn't even apply to using the browser, just any screenshots you post of it). There are far bigger show-stoppers than any potentially nasty EULA clauses.

Anyway, here's some information that everybody that's slagging it off already, based on this (and the thousands of identical articles being posted today) should read:

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/privacy.html

[Ian]

Lets not get over excited

'Christoph' has hit the nail on the head. This is a PR mess for Google, and they will back down, quietly. I don't believe they have sinister plans for this - they are clever people and this was never going to work.

[F Cage]

B3TA have...

already modified the comic to suit:

http://www.b3tards.com/u/73ec12ab3d29a4d600fa/chrome.jpg

[David Buckley]

didn't you know

google is the internet

if you post something to the internet your giving it to google eventualy

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, but does it even work?

1) This is a standard part of the EULA for Google services such as Picasa. WTF it's doing in Chrome I'm not entirely sure, since a browser isn't really a service until it's safely hidden in the "cloud".

2) How is this even enforceable when the project is open-sourced? It'll be a matter of time until someone takes the project and releases it without the EULA which should be perfectly possible. It just.. doesn't make sense to have it in there.

[Cliff]

Creepy Uncle

Google's getting a little *too* interested, definitely creepy behaviour

[unfunk]

...and some more counter-anti-hyperbole

That Matt Cutts fellow has some more privacy-related information to.. er.. foil... those tinfoil-hat wearers in the audience today:

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

[Dan]

@"the Services"?

"the Services" is defined in 1.1:

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.

Chrome falls under the software of "the Services".

[Anonymous Coward]

Are my passwords content?

i bet they are.

And personal info?

[bigolslabomeat]

Another software ban on the network

Just done the all staff email banning this from being installed. Good work Google, I was enjoying Chrome for a while there.

[Martyn Ranyard]

Interesting scenario

(IANAL) Even though the wording isn't watertight, that doesn't really matter, because then it's down to interpretation, that said, if you interpret Chrome as a google service, here's an interesting one :

Purchase something online via an ssl link, well google now has the right to copy your card details and CCV, address, all that good stuff...

...scared yet?

Oh and yeah, thanks to that commenter the other day, I too am scroogling :-)

[Britt Johnston]

slippery

The display claim suggests that I only have to leaf through pages designed by Microsoft to transfer free use to Google.

"Think no evil" is more like it.

[Chris J]

Use the source!

The source is notionally licensed under a BSD-like thing, so you could always just download the sources and build. Then make your fame and (lack of) fortune by posting it to t'internet under the original BSD license.

The full license is described here: http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html

[david]

Silly Google

The terms are from YouTube!

http://forums.hexus.net/lifestyle-news/146732-news-google-enter-browser-wars-google-chrome-2.html#post1513045

Check Item 6. C.

[adnim]

Services.

As others have mentioned, I too expect the services to mean Google docs, Gmail indeed any Google service one uploads data to.

All you data belongs them as soon as it hits their servers to do with what they wish.

Close all your Google accounts now, keep your business and your personal data private.

I would expect similar T&C's from any cloud based service operation. Privacy online is a myth. I knew I wasn't paranoid.

[Jeff]

How do they get access to all the stuff I'm posting?

-Incognito mode does not protect against google's continuous drive to destroy your privacy.

[Tony]

Always read the text

A couple of years ago, I read the text of a EULA for a particular product - to my astonishment, I found that we (and every other customer of theirs) had been in breach of their conditions ever since the product was launched.

Why?

Because they had mis-typed one word, and the error had been reproduced in every single EULA that they printed over many years. Instead a of a clause about not being responsible in the event of lightning, they missed a letter - so we were not allowed to use the product with the lights turned on!

The smart Armani jacket please. It's not mine, but it's better than any I've got!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand

surely this is just like downloading other people's copyrighted work and not paying for it and there are so many supporters of that idea :)

I am glad Google have done something like this, and I am glad the Reg has drawn attention to this. Because that is what people are doing to musical artists, and software developers, but in this instance sort of copyright righting.

Now most people won't know about this in Chrome, and of course Google has the advertising clout to get this browser installed everywhere, it is going to be very amusing when everyone's work is owned by Google.

For example an enterprising Google could just submit your report to you boss, or quickly release that game you have been working on using a subversion web based repository, beating you to market. How about a cloned El Reg, no need to pay the writers, not if they use chrome can quickly nab that off the line and publish elsewhere; El Geg perhaps.

If this highlights why copyright is important, and it allows people to attach a value to work of an intellectual variety I think it is a good thng. Advertising only works because of the product, you have to have products to advertise, this is Google's way of getting these products for nothing and selling advertising on top, genius.

The other thing I like about Google is how it has systematically used open source software and given very little back, you have to admire that, sure it is now employing quite a few open source guys, but they are being paid to make Google software - that is one hell of an interview process; build a complete Programming Language and we will give you a job, where you have to ask the web what is the best WSGI implementation.

So, lessons to learn about this all:

Only open source development tools, that way you might get a job at Google.

Maintain copyright to all applications that you write and never GPL those, they just create support headaches and no revenue, plus no one wants to give you a job in that field as effectively you have created a zero cost competitor.

If you are going to open source an application make sure you own all the data pumped through that application by copright righting - ensure Google cannot pinch that by clausing that the copyright you have just nabbed is never transferable without express permission.

Don't believe Stallman he will just make you poor. Oh, Linus had you used another License system you could be a very wealthy, powerful man today. Instead you work for Google :)

Explain how your software works by drawing cartoons, and to ensure you have the right information hang out on IRC and see what they are moaning about.

Now, we can get this software business back on track, doing what it does best making developers rich and competing on software advantage.

The greatest lie Lucifer ever told, was that he didn't exist.

Three cheers for Google, you are the epitome of evil and we love you for it :)

[RW]

Why does this not surprise me?

Corporations are evil.

When they head off to work, the people running corporations leave behind ethics, morals, and the distinctions between right and wrong and good and bad.

Why do corporations act in ways that no one except a truly evil person would act vis a vis their meat-friends? Why do men and women who help old ladies across the street, give candy to children, and pet dogs turn into totally amoral jerks in the office?

It may sound like another silly RW fantasy, but I begin to think that the law should stipulate that corporate directors and senior managers, lawyers, bean counters, and marketing people are psycho- and sociopaths whose guilt may be presumed. Appropriate warning symbols tattooed on their foreheads wouldn't be amiss.

Google makes a big deal about doing no evil, but then pulls a stunt like this. ¿Didn't *anybody* in charge point to that clause, kick the lawyer responsible in the nuts, and say "that's WRONG"? Doesn't anybody at Google care that this happened?

I don't like Google one bit. When they took over blogger.com, it didn't take me long to decide that I didn't care to be a appendage of the googleplex and delete my blogs and my account, as well as blocking google cookies. For all their protestations of innocence, they're nothing more that what Phorm would like to be and do nothing more (or less) than what Phorm would like to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the reference to William Gibson's 'Burning Chrome'

title says it all.

Not sure that a book about cracking an AI is entirely relevant, but it's close enough, and the book is excellent.

[Mongoloid]

RE: Chrome Crawler?

I've noticed this too, it's only the page file it's using though, not quite sure why mind.

I only noticed it because my page file is on a particularly noisy (albeit particularly quick) drive, and whenever Chrome is open and active, the disc with the paging file on is chugging away.

[Mart]

Easy resolution

everyone use chrome to upload illegal material, ie al-queda manuals, hey presto google now own your illegal upload and BAMN! millions of accounts of possessing illegal materials bye bye chrome

ph cos i bet she cant wait to upload her latest vids for sharing with the web

[Anonymous Coward]

User-Agent string please someone?

Because if Google think they are taking my content and claiming it as their own, simply because someone visits my web site, people who use this browser won't be looking at my sites very much longer.

They'll be redirected to this Reg article instead.

[Andus McCoatover]

IANAL

<<And IANAL so there's a good chance I just can't interpret legalese properly.>>

Yep, but we're supposed to obey the law without a legal qualification...then this sh1t is put into obfuscated language to *ensure* we don't understand it.

e.g..."Ignorantia juris non excusat*"

is a legal term, but I don't fuc*king understand it (nor latin either)

OK, so I GOOGLED for it. Shame on me.

*Ignorance of the law is no excuse

FFS. No wonder these fuck*ing lawyers put on silly clothes and daft wigs, then have to 'touch silk' which, when I was a lad meant sommat different. ("I'm touching silk" "well, go to the crapper soonest")

**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat

[P. Lee]

re: GPL violation

Actually its LGPL and BSD according to their home page.

Now we see why they are keen on separate processes for everything...

... or it could just be incompetence!

Paris because she doesn't seem to care about her material being copied around the internet...

[Anonymous Coward]

EULA

I have an EULA on my PC when I boot up that says that anything I do on my machine I can do with full disregard to other EULA's

[Anonymous Coward]

@Ken Hagan

"This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services ..."

Is there a definition of "Services"

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's open source...

Then can't I build it from source and redistribute it? In that case, surely I don't have to pass on this silly EULA? After all, if the project were to fork, and another team derived a new browser from it, then surely they wouldn't be expecting all their users to give up their content rights to Google as well? For ever?

If that's what happens (there'd have to be some tricky wording in the licence I guess) then I don't think the term "open source" should be applied to Chrome.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop moaning

Uninstall if you are not hap[y and tell them what you think

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=uninstall&crversion=0.2.149.27

[Anonymous Coward]

oh for feck's sake!...

is this 'national comment like a retard' day, or what?!

for a start, this is obviously a cock-up. someone at google has copy/pasted a generic licence agreement.

and for a second. even if it were intentional there's not a court in the universe that would uphold a clause like that, even if you had had clicked the 'agree' button with a finger dipped in your own blood.

nothing to see here . move along please

[jeez! - the reg gets more like the sunday sport every day!]

[Anonymous Coward]

funny

when myspaz did something almost similar but not people got all up in arms. now google do something considerably worse people go "oh it must be a mistake", "oh it lets them display stuff" etc etc. yes some of it is to let them display stuff worldwide but the "perpetual, irrevocable" terminology is a complete rights grab.

[Anonymous Coward]

Class, that fixes the US Immigration information theft leak.

I think it's a highly efficient license to legalise industrial espionage. At the moment there's still a little bit of wiggle room possible when US Immigration nicks your kit, but this nicely plugs the hole where you'd then use the web to get at the remote drive you stuck your data on prior to boarding for the US.

Do no evil? Heck, Google just accidentally made it clear they have very much joined the club, and it's no surprise given that they have their hands on so much data.

What was that URL again? Ah, yes, a-l-t-a-v-i-s-t-a ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not legal in Europe

Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights:

right to privacy and family life.

They can't do this in Europe.

[Claire Rand]

ownership, ads & tracking

wouldn't be to surprised if this isn't an attempt at something ala phorm, but at the browser end feeding to the mothership to enable ads that are somewhat harder to block (though won't be impossible).

the argument being that the user consents to the spying via the eula, and the site owner consents (sticking point for phorm) via allowing the browser id string.

too many people block that string wanna bet the site page rank takes a hit, a small one but will hit ad funded sites.. who don't play ball.

it will get scaled back but only so far

given google make money from ads I can't see adblocking software being all that useful here, given frequent updates will probably keep hobbling it, a side effect naturally.

so what does this offer that other browsers don't exactly?

time for this was two years ago, now its a tad late, windows users get msie, unless they can be bothered to change it (and corp users typically don't get a choice), mac users get safari, again unless they can be bothered. linux users get dazzled by the array of choice, but are generally 'bothered' to find something they like.

for anyone else the eula is more or less a non issue, people will stick with the default unless a change helps them, typically adblocking

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'll find ...

Copyright cannot be transferred and certainly NOT waived without due legal process, process not embodied in a single EULA paragraph.

[Anonymous Coward]

So

Google wants every page I browse, eh? If I start browsing pages with virus-laden links, do they get to keep those too? How about the ones where just clicking on the link gets you spam from hell? If Google wants it all, as George Carlin said, they'd better have enough space to put it in.

The frightening thought is that they just might have enough, and then they'd have a virus and spam library on top of everything else. Brrrrrrrr.

Jolly Roger, since Google has turned into a corporate data pirate. Make em walk the plank, matey. With cannonballs tied to their legs.

[Side note: isn't this how artificial intelligences come into being, with a huge influx of base knowledge? Skynet, here we come.]

[Daniel]

It's the tinfoil hat brigade!

First of all can you call a web browser a service? surely its a product?

Either way thats not the point, as numerous have mentioned this is unlikely to be intentional as there is no way they could confirm that everything you post and everything you browse is yours to give them rights to. So that just renders the entire thing useless. Don't write off what may be a very good browser because somebody copied and pasted the thing into a BETA release.

Man, I can imagine the train of thought some of you must go through...

"What's that, there's a new bandwagon rolling through town? LET ME ON!!!!!"

Put the tinfoil hats down and climb down from your high horse...

[yossarianuk]

google earth?

Do that mean if I view the earth with Google earth i'm giving them ownership of the entire planet.

I'm sure the Russians would be pissed...........

[ratfox]

Yet Another Crap EULA

Honestly, EULA are becoming closer and closer to scientology crap.

We need more EULAs like this one. The more stupid and obviously unenforceable they become, the quicker the world will realize that EULAs do not belong to the domain of law, but fiction, and should not be taken seriously.

Paris, because nobody takes her seriously either.

[Wokstation]

Hmmm... time to ban the Chrome useragent

I'm not having Google do that crap with my photography just because someone used Chrome to look at it. Time to add the Chrome useragent to my exceptions list.

[Dan Kegel]

Official response from Google

Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, said:

"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."

So it looks like the message was received.

[Mark]

Shall we all calm down, just a little bit?

Personally, I think a journo should get at least a smidgen of legal advice before publishing this sort of scare story. Taking a single clause out of context and waving it about like a red flag in front of a bull herd of Firefox fans may get pulses racing but doesn't smack of much integrity.

Pretty obviously this clause is there to stop a content poster from coming back to Google and saying "You're showing my video through your Service across the entire globe, to millions and millions of people. I demand one million dollars in licensing revenue and a trillion more in punitive damages."

[James Butler]

Legalese

Folks, reading and understanding the EULA and its impact on your use of Chrome are obviously very different things, as evidenced by so many uninformed comments, here.

Chrome is a web browser .. an "application" .. a "program" ... a stand-alone product that does not rely on Google beyond getting a copy of it from their servers. It does not "phone home". It is not a "Google Service".

A "Google Service" is a third party (Google) application **hosted and maintained by Google**. Examples include Gmail, Google Documents, Picasa, etc. As a third party service, you MUST grant Google the license to "copy" and "display" (etc.) your content while you retain all rights to it, if you expect to use their services, because otherwise you would be unable to actually use their services at all ... not because of legal issues, but because of how those services work.

Example: You use Gmail to collect your mail. Well ... Google's servers must "copy" any messages you get in order to store that message on their Gmail servers. Similarly, you must allow them to "display" that message, or else how would you see it? If you deny Google the license to "copy" your email message held in Gmail, how would they store them? If you refused them the license to "display" the messages, how would you see them? They don't own any part of your messages ... but you MUST grant Google the license to do several things with your messages because THAT'S HOW IT WORKS.

Browsing the web with Chrome doesn't give you any rights to the content you see, any more than it gives others or Google any rights to your copyrighted content. Do you understand how the cache works? It makes a "copy" of web content and then the browser "displays" that copy for your viewing pleasure. So stop being silly and try to remember what business most of us are in.

Sure, the EULA may be rewritten so it's more easily understandable to folks (like those here) who lack the ability to understand the legalese, but there's nothing in this EULA that will harm any of you or your protected content. Learn to love the bomb. Jeez.

[Claire Rand]

@Daniel

not so much tin foil hat, well not for me, just to a degree I don't care how good this is, unless its say 10% better than FF or safari I see no need to change, at least not yet, maybe for V2 but not for V1, and certainly not for beta.

I just can't somehow see google going hell for leather to make something that people can write a version of 'adblock' for, I'd not see the sense from their point of view, and if they do one that includes adblock, for everything that google doesn't own... well I'd not trust that either.

yes this is probably a mistake in terms of words, but probably not in terms of intentions.

like I said, a few years ago maybe, but now nah.

I also don't think this is aimed at msie, its two pronged, one to avoid the adblocking in FF and other browsers, secondly a shot over at ms to show what google could do if they tried and as a warning not to fight them.

give it a few years, google will have the net, ms will have the desktop, and while it won't be formal they won't seriously challenge each other in terms of b2c stuff. b2b is ms space and will stay so for a while yet

linux? to 'open' to hard for commercial companies to lock the users actions down (not companies, just to easy for people to remove stuff they don't like). apple? a minority on the desktop (as now).

the battle on the web is more or less over, the battle now is access to the web (i.e your isp decided what you can and can't do, not ms or google) and in the mobile application arena, which still needs a 'killer' app other than sms and phone calls.

no idea what will be the mobile killer but something will. maybe when we can have a short range high bandwidth comms to allow wireless monitors or something.. dunno

tin foil hat & coat, but tastefully done

[Anonymous Coward]

Try to uninstall it

I dl'ed it and set it up to see, it seemed nice but also annoying could cuase problems if you didnt alwways use the incognitio feature. Every time you fire up the browers it loads last viewed pages. hmmm. Ie jobserve or the hun .

It also tries to update it self all the time causing a nuisence with firewalls, and whe you try to uninstall it its doesnt really go away.

Anyway I trashed it and I doubt i ll ever use it. Pity; it looks nice.

like a pretty girl with a rough accent.

[Eric Dennis]

Ok

Well that settles it. I'm uninstalling Chrome from my desktop and not installing it on my laptop until you post that this nonsense has been reversed, i.e. sections of the EULA changed.

PARIS because, while she may be naive, I am not.

[Frank Thomas]

Sry Reg. you belong to google now

well I'm afraid I used Chrome to display EL Reg. I guess all your base are belong to them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Two certainties.

1. Google intended the wording be as it is and any supposition to the contrary is mistaken this company doesn't do anything by mistake.

2. Their about face on Google code allowing the Mozilla license shows they know what they're doing when it comes to trying to steal the rights for everything on the net. They will do an about face on this too but they will keep trying till they own it all.

Posting anon because we're talking about Google here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, geeks ...

You can simply download the source code for Chrome and recompile it to suit your own sweet self, give it any name you like and remove all the Google related stuff — hey bingo: no legal barrier to doing what the fuck you like.

However, as I said before: ye cannie waive copyright or sign it away without legal process. OK?

Try a taste of real life before going off on one.

[Thomas Baker]

The logo/icon thingy for Chrome.

First off, doesn't really say 'Chrome' to me. 'Chrome' makes me think of kitchen taps and the like.

But also, why have they chosen a logo that looks like one of those Simple Simon games from the 80's? Anyone else remember that game? It lights up each colour in a certain sequence with Casiophonic sounds to accompany them and you have to follow the sequence exactly by keying it in on the same plastic buttons. It was lame and wasn't fun even for a few seconds but did sell rather well. I think it was called Simple Simon but I might be wrong. I think it was named after the "Simon Says" game, whereby your local Catholic priest or Scout leader would help you earn a back row place in the choir and thus light duty on the singing/a new badge - by saying "Simon says: Reach for the soap", or whatever. I found it difficult to play by virtue of the fact that I'm not called Simon and felt a tit pretending to be so.

Anyway, crap Google Chrome logo imho.

[Marty McFly]

Changed!

Looks like The Reg had some influence! Section 11.1 now reads:

"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."

Period. End. No further jargon.

[Alastair]

License agreement updated!

They updated the license agreement and totally removed 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.

Maybe a slightly lower on the evil scale.

[Eugene Meany]

Definition of services....

It is what a bull does to a cow, usually a bit before spring. A vet can do it to, but using a bit of tube. And apparently Google can do it to anyone via their browser.....

Mines the one with "I didn't read the EULA before bending over and it hurt a bit" on the back.

EM

[Wokstation]

Google update EULA!

They've changed the EULA:

11. Content licence from you

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

- but by using the term "the Services", they could have just done themselves out of the right to use Youtube content for promo purposes, because "the Services" is a nebulous descriptor.

Oops.

[Raa]

Hey guys

Look at the EULA again. It's copy and pasted from Google's main EULA regarding the search engine, and that part protects them from copyright infringement when they cache images and websites.

The offending part of the Chrome EULA was removed:

"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."

[Pilchardboy]

Seriously - Edit / Delete This Article

I love the Reg, but this is just awful.

You want to have a crack at Google, fair enough - but pick the fights where the facts stack up.

Countless lawyer types and others have already pointed out that this article misinterprets the clause and now it's just a shitstorm of negativity based on a false premise.

I spent a whole day on the original myspace EULA back in the day cos a load of labels couldn't work out whether or not it meant that myspace would end up owning all their stuff. This is no different, just what's required for them to display your content without breaching your copyright / moral rights etc. It's harmless - or, at least, not far off (and will doubtless be reworded to eliminate ambiguity).

This crap's all over the web already - correction required. This is out of order - expect better from The Reg <bows humbly>

[Anonymous Coward]

FUD and nonsense, and IT'S ALREADY FIXED.

Hey, go check the current version of

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

"11. Content licence from you

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

12. Software updates[SNIP]"

What a huge steaming great heap of .... fuss about nothing. Bleedin' obvious that it was a thoughtless blind cut'n'paste from their other t's and c's and that's all there was too it. There's no secret backdoor or nothing, no phone home, no snarf-yer-private-data and it's all open source.

Of course to the tinfoil hat brigade nothing's ever obvious except that they're right about everything and everyone else is blind and stupid sheep for not seeing it like they do. Smug self-righteous pride goes before a fall, don't you know?

[Gordon Fecyk]

How to keep Chrome off managed PCs

Limited accounts on XP, Standard accounts on Vista, non-admin accounts on MacOS X, and so on. "Managed PCs" can include home PCs managed by parents of crafty kids, too.

Chrome's EULA sounds like the ultimate spyware EULA ever written by a company. Glad to see it's getting fixed, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean

That now I've viewed this via Chrome The Register now belongs to Google? Pity M$ didn't think of it first.

[Zmodem]

whats it matter

they already cached the whole web. the whole world could sue them for infringment of copyright

[Solomon Grundy]

Bill Gates

and MS already used the 'Chrome' product name. Once again some tech company is trying their best to emulate Redmond.

Who needs another browser anyway? Some few geeks might want it but other than that the general public and businesses don't care how they get to the porn, or whatever.

Google is starting to stink like old sailor jizz.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I don't like Google's 'fcuk you, we OWN you' attitude.

And yet you accept M$'s fcuk you, we PWN you attitude? Why?

Penguin, because I own the penguin AND my hardware, not the other way round.

[Anonymous Coward]

The olympics are over, people...

...it's too late to get the gold in the Knee Jerk.

[Simon]

so what if google says 'oops it was a mistake'? LIES!!!

Assuming google knew that people would revolt against it, they probably shoved it in anyway to get at least a couple of weeks of statistics out of it.

No doubt a great way to see how your new browser launch is going is to big brother the hell out of everyones life to see what they are doing etc.

Even if it only lasts two weeks I am sure it's a goldmine of information.

For all we know, they could have released it purely for a 2 week data gathering exercise! It's like installing spyware onto millions of computers.

No doubt everyone will guzzle up the "oops we didnt mean to" reason.

Paris, because she knows about guzzling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google apologists

Hey, this is loads of free advertising for Chrome, I hadn't heard of it except in the context of Firefox chrome, until nowish.

And it seems they have changed the licensing agreement, so the Register was quite within its right to run the story as is. You should be thanking the Register and the commentators, in fact the story may have lead to the turn somewhat 180 degree turn about on the license.

Which perhaps quite clearly stated that if you used Chrome then you would give Google the right to use whatever content was passed through it as long as you had the copyright, which I personally I thought was quite a bold move by Google; hang it, the data is valuable as well :)

And frankly if someone arses up, then well you don't go blaming the commentators or the messenger, weirdos. Take it on the chin google fanbois.

[Matt Cutts]

The EULA has been changes

Hi Chris, Google has already changed the EULA. It now simply 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."

[Mark Simon]

Invalid Contract

As far as I am aware, any contract that includes nonsensical or impossible requirements, such as

... by clicking reading this sentence you agree to give me all of your money, name your first-born after the Marx Brothers, end world hunger, resurrect Elvis and show Paris Hilton to be a sensible, intelligent and useful member of our society ...

automatically invalidates itself. Surely this must apply?

[bruceld]

or perhaps....

it's just a way to get publicity

[Peter]

Evidence Google is now a BIG company ..

I think they simply screwed up here. Yes, the terms were plain unacceptable, but it appears a recycled template and they have fixed it now. Shame it needs a good bash before they caught that one, but look at the bright side:

People are actually starting to *READ* EULAs !!

IMHO that is a profound change, because this means it'll be a matter of time before the dodgy stuff in certain other EULAs gets objected to.

[Maty]

Google can't take my rights

I gave them to Microsoft long ago. The '98 EULA, I think it was.

PS By reading this post you unconditonally allow me the right to sacrifice your first-born son to Satan. And that's just as binding as the interpretation some people are putting on this EULA. Just because something is asserted in a EULA don't make it legal. The law of the land takes precedence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy and Paste EULA???

Google is a huge, American firm that is well used to lawsuits - so why are so many people posting here that someone just copied and pasted that EULA into the installer? Claiming that it was pasted in, almost as an afterthought??? I doubt very, very much that is the case. I am sure that EULA was given plenty of thought and you can be sure every word was scrutinised before it was finalised.

[Chris]

OK - so they removed it

But they tried it on. Again. Google's entire attitude has become impossible.

Worse than any other software company out there. As far as I'm concerned Google no longer exists. There are after all viable alternatives to everything Google offers.

Which brings me neatly to A/C and his objection to my "And yet you accept M$'s fcuk you, we PWN you attitude? Why?"

Well, here's a couple of reasons pal: Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark... Anytime Linux can run those, just let me know! Oh, and games. And hardware drivers.

Forget OSX too, for two reasons, games and vastly overpriced and rubbish hardware.

M$ have an 'excuse'. Google don't. What Google HAD was a vast reservoir of goodwill, which they have steadily pissed away. I don't think anyone ever had much goodwill where M$ was concerned...

[John Munyard]

Google joins the lazy, greedy corporates

I laughed when I read this article, as I had a similar reaction when I read the huge Chrome EULA last night. How does a "free" open source browser (plagarised as it is from it's competitors' code) come with so much legal baggage attached? My antennae were immediately twitching as I re-read some of the terms.

But then I finally tried it quickly. What a (slow) piece of crap.

Hail Firefox3. All my base belong to me. Hopefully.

[dervheid]

Oh..kay...

now all they need to do is remove the same clauses from all the EULA of all their other 'services' which DO contain this wording (from Googlemail)

"11. Content licence 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. 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.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organisations 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.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence."

Deja Vu, anyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn...

..another browser. Oh please, god no. I don't think I can take the excitement. Just think, I'll be able to look at web pages - incredible. I have waited so long for someone to come out with another product which does exactly the same think as hundreds of others, but with wild and excitingly new aesthetics. Wow. Just imagine. Everything will be wonderful.

Daniel - Bless you and your incredibly naive, cliched sounding `tin foil hat` comments. You just make yourself look hard of thinking, please stop it, it's embarrassing for the rest of us thinkers.

[Chris]

One problem down, more to come

Well done for updating the EULA, what about the security hole?

The first thing I noticed using Chrome wasn't it's speed or it's futuristic UI, it was how ad's many there are on the internet

How many domain's a webpage connects to just to display

How much longer pages with ad's take to load

(Yes Chrome renders pages the quickest, but by displaying ad's and consequently different parts of pages being hosted by different domains, you have to wait for multiple servers to respond)

So ignore benchmark testing of page loads or sites/reports these sites don't carry cross domain ad's, and use real sites that often carry ad's, they all take longer to load

Chrome isn't released to take market share from IE

It's been released to combat Firefox's growing market share and the popularity of the AdBlocking extensions

Google will continue to support Mozilla to avoid anti-trust interest, but as Chrome develops with more features, and more people make the switch (only the 20% of people realise they can make the switch the other 80% don't know they can or don't care)

Firefox may eventually dwindle to a few percent market share, and Google will quietly drop support, and instead support their own Chromium, and with it their ad supported Chrome

Do no evil?

Make your own mind up, but don't fall for blog hype

And they haven't mentioned the massive security hole already discovered,

[Antonio]

eBay and PayPal too

This is eBay and PayPal user agreements

Content

When you give us content, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise the copyright, publicity, trade marks, database rights and intellectual property rights you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future. In addition, you waive all moral rights you have in the content to the fullest extent permitted by law.

[Kevin]

It has been fixed

The eula was corrected long ago... many sites are blowing it out of purportion. All they did was use a copy of their existing eula for google services.

The stated entry has been updated to ONLY say this:

11. Content licence from you

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

And it applies to all existing copies and new downloads.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ eBay and PayPal too

This is why antipodeans think that TradeMe is much less evil

[JR]

Google's privacy invasion 'accidental' - Virgin Mobile's is deliberate

Google is not the only company to make such outrageous claims of ownership of other peoples' property - even if it was an 'accident' in this case.

Virgin Mobile - the phone company - has similar language buried deep in their user agreement. In that case, it is not an accident, but quite deliberate.

Virgin goes one stage further: You actually grant them the right to distribute and even sell anything you communicate through the phone.

This applies even when what you send through the phone is the property of someone else - if you take a picture of the 'Coke' trademark and send it through your Virgin phone, Virgin owns it and can sell it.

And since Coca Cola wouldn't be very happy with that, Virgin also makes you indemnify them from any damages from them stealing someone else's property.

Google at least corrected its mistake. Other companies, like Virgin Mobile, publicly advertise themselves as warm and cuddly, but quietly continue their attacks on the customers foolish enough to trust them.

Read the fine print, don't do business with companies like Virgin that abuse trusting customers, and make sure to tell everyone about the 'evil' companies so they cannot hide.

[wen shi di]

What is Wrong with Google??

Just months after Mozilla releases a first-class free product that sets a world record for the number of free downloads, Google decides to move into the same market with a competitive product. We already have a stack of great browsers, and now that my freshly installed Firefox 3.0 is fully loaded with all my bookmarks, plug-ins and passwords, why would I want to even to beta test this Chrome creation? What on Google Earth are they thinking?

So what should Google really be doing, rather than releasing copycat products onto an already swamped market? Here are five key areas where Google could really be making some positive impact.

1. Bit Torrent traffic now accounts for almost half of the global internet traffic but as far as Google is concerned, all of this information might as well not exist. True, you can see what is on public trackers such as Pirate Bay or Mininova, but what about the tens of thousands of private trackers where the real action is located? For many of these sites, their main weaknesses are their search capabilities and their relatively small communities. As TV quickly converges with the internet, this is an area where Google could really become a major player. If it were my call, I would go for a zero tolerance policy towards file sharing on the main web search, and release a specialist torrent search software that focuses solely on this rapidly expanding sector of the market. If Google had put the same efforts into a private torrent aggregator as they have into a browser, I would be investing my life savings into the stock.

2. One of the company's best products so far has been Google Earth, but why has it not been taken to its full potential. What happened to the merger of Google Earth and the traditional travel guide-books using this revolutionary new perspective? Where are the KML links pinpointing the geographical locations of all the fantastic documentaries that are now available on the torrent networks? A virtual map of the Earth is a great place to start building a new business empire. We already have a good selection of web browsers to choose from, what we want now is a good Earth browser.

3. Some pundits have conjectured that the release of Chrome coincides with a new release of IE which by default blocks all ads, depriving Google of its life-giving revenue stream. Advertising in all its forms has always suffered from eventual market fragmentation. While the databases and software required to run this kind of ad placement might be ultra complex, the idea itself is not. Even with all the creativity of its best artists, producers and directors, the traditional ad industry is an continually developing arms race for getting the message out to consumers. Google cannot sit back on a few flashy logarithms and expect the success to last forever. Already many other ad placement set-ups are appearing, that will quickly lay siege to Google's rather precarious peak position. In other words do not expect online ad revenues to keep on climbing indefinitely for Google. From almost one hundred percent, the market share can only shrink. I only hope that Google will refocus on its core business which is providing information.

4. The real problem is that browsers have already reached their limitations in terms of the World Wide Web, mainly because it has been so successfully co-opted by business. Serious research using the internet has become more and more difficult as the web has become more and more crowded with media stories, blogs, wikis and social networks. Needless to say, research on many subjects can now be done better at a traditional, but well stocked library rather than online. Whatever its stock price, Google simply does not offer as good a service as a well trained, experienced librarian. Rather than competing for a small fraction of the browser market, Google would do better to simply make a larger internet available to more people. In fact, some might say that as the planet's default search engine, it is their obligation to make as much information available to as many people as possible. Thanks to it shareholder obligations, Google search remains more of an unimaginative Yellow Pages than a planetary library. Some have described it merely as 'Craigs List on steroids' but my own comparison would be that Google resembles a set of the literary criticism notes that are popular with students, while the actual texts of the reading lists remain in the Dark Web. Google has not bought forth the expected gigaflood of information that many had expected and hoped for. The contents of most libraries remain unavailable to internet search engines, as are most books, magazines and newspaper back catalogues. Seen as an assembler of information, Google is way behind other open-source projects such as Gutenberg and Wikipedia. Even though they introduced a very promising librarian type service called Google Answers, the scheme was quickly dropped causing an outry amongst its many adherents.

5. Why go head to head with Mozilla, one of the most popular and admired companies on the Net? If Google really wanted to make a mark, then eBay would be a far better adversary. The online auction giant has been stagnating for years now, as users tire of incessant price increases, and recently acquired subsidiaries such as Paypal and Skype become public enemies in themselves. Online auctions were some of the fastest growth areas in the net's history, and could easily be so again if Google had the vision to properly attack this project. Forget another browser and launch a peer-to-peer freebay auction site, with special attention paid to delivery networks, where prices have increased the most, and users will flee from Ebay like Michael Phelps escaping the Titanic.

The author is currently in Asia researching material for an forthcoming paper entitled 'The Exaflood and the New Rennaisance' and can be should be contacted at his out-of-office email adress which is wenshidi at yahoo.co.uk

[NT]

@ Chris

"What Google HAD was a vast reservoir of goodwill, which they have steadily pissed away."

Google pissed away most of its public goodwill by growing, as most large companies do. A company can have goodwill or it can be big. The two are mutually exclusive. People root for the underdog. They might worship the wealthy and successful and seek to emulate them, but failing that they love nothing more than seeing those same people brought down. A successful company, it's assumed, must have got to where it is by sinister and underhand means and by treading on the little guys.

Think of any large corporation and you'll find conspiracy theories aplenty. Try reading through some of the articles on snopes.com relating to Coca-Cola and Disney, to name but two. Microsoft is another obvious one, as seen with depressing regularity on here, as of course is Google.

Now I'll freely admit I don't much like Google. I won't be using Chrome for the time being, because I'm quite happy with my current browser. And I admit, I don't like the floods of cookies Google subject me to when I use their 'services', and this is why my involvement with them is generally limited to using their search engine. I wouldn't even do that if it weren't undeniably the best search engine around. I'd rather support some of the smaller ones, like AltaVista or Ask - but the simple fact is that they can't do what Google does - at least, not quite so well. (On the other hand, I do like Google Earth, and even Street View is looking interesting, so maybe I'm just a shill on the payroll of the conspirators.) Privacy is important, and vigilance should certainly be maintained. Questions should be asked. But we have to be rational. The fervour with which Google's detractors leap on every question and peculiarity hardly seems to qualify there. Cynicism, pessimism and paranoia might be the *safest* course, but then, I'd probably be a sight safer if I stayed locked in my house day and night, never did anything and never interacted with anyone. Would I be living a better life, though?

This EULA started out wrong. Now it's right. This suspicious wording has been removed, and Google have offered an explanation and an assurance that the change applies retrospectively. The only question that remains is whether we now want to get on with our lives, or spend our time throwing unverifiable allegations around. If you've decided that Google, or anyone else, are the Evil Empire, then nothing they say or do is likely to convince you otherwise.

The Mars Global Surveyor photos of Cydonia *had* to be fabricated, because they didn't show a Face, and since everyone *knows* the Face is there that just proves that NASA are Up To Something. Right?

(It's been suggested that the BBC are deliberately framing their Have Your Say questions in ways they hope will attract the largest number of entertaining ranters. I suspect the Reg staff are thinking along the same lines: wind 'em up and watch 'em go.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome sufficiently tarnished

To think I actually installed it without hiring a lawyer to explain those evil t&c properly. Never again.. until next time anyway. It does seem to be a lot of fuss over very little since those terms were so badly thought out they had to be re-written anyway. Alas 30 minutes after installation I was back to slim-browser and wondering why the G didn't just buy that instead. It seems Chrome is a little further down the precious metals scale than implied... tin or copper maybe. No doubt the mining puns will follow.

[F. Andy Seidl]

Not all EULA's are bad... and Google's fixing this one

Note that Google has acknowledged this and is retroactively fixing the EULA. EULA's in general are not bad... but this specific term certainly is. For more on this, see:

EULA: What--Me Worry?

http://faseidl.com/public/blog/187697