OK, now i'll download the thing.

Be warned though, the 1st time i even suspect that its phoning back to the mothership with any history or personal/profiling info the thing is off my system.

That didn't take long to "resolve" :)

it won't be too long before someone else comes along trying to take chrome down in flames.

im guessing itll be the firesux fanbois.

im nearly tempted to try chrome now.

we'll call it a draw.

<request for an armless, legless Black Knight icon please>

The fact that the original section remains for their other EULAs is still totally unacceptable. I have no problem with them needing the rights to "copy" (i.e. move from server to server, back-up etc) my content in order to provide the service, but I object to them trying to acquire "a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that [I] submit, post or display on or through the Services".

Te technical requirements of supporting their service have hee-haw to do with publicly displaying them or creating derivative works. They have no need for the "public" sections as copy and then displaying the content to me (the logged in user) is not "public display" in any sense of the phrase I can think of (unless, of course, *I* choose to display it publicly).

This license is just a money grab by Google to profit from my labour and it would also allow them to (on a whim) display or reproduce items I may consider personal, sensitive or of commercial value. For that reason, I will be avoiding all Google tech like the plague.

Google is the new Microsoft.

...the tinfoil hat brigade will still think they tried to pull a fast one and will vehemently point out to anyone (who aren't fast enough to get away) that they're proven right by the fact that Google says they're wrong.

now all they need to do is remove it from ALL their other 'services'

(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?

'Rebecca Ward, the Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, wrote: “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..."'

So, if this was noneother than a good ol' copy/paste cockup, the new question is what are these other products that do grab “a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services”?

fix the fact that we cant run it on our company machines.

i installed it on home machine last night and it fliers superspeed. much faster than ie and especially FF :)

All I need now is an explanation as to why the "Google Installer" tries to phone home every time a wake my machine from sleep or reboot.

Other than that, its a cracking browser. I'm starting to think that it might be better than FF 3 or Opera...

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 this doesn't mention the massive security hole already discovered,

Not even the legal team that puts them in place.. that must be proof of their irrelevance and often unfair implementation.

Google's legal dept been onto you has it?

Well, what are they going to do for you, if you polish this turd for them?

How can an EULA be valid if nobody reads them, in effect Google are accepting here that they didn't read it, and we certainly don't read it.

EULA are dead.

Contracts that nobody reads are not contracts, certainly not accepted contracts.

There's still something of the night about them.

They only do so to promote the Service.

You have a best-selling novel your wrote in Google Docs? Fine, they want to use that fact to promote Google Docs.

Your YouTube vid is a hit? Well, they can use it on the front page of YouTube or in an ad about YouTube.

The sentence after the one causing all the fuss clearly says:

"This licence is for the SOLE PURPOSE of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services"

"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"

Oh, how wrong you are.

Tip: try maximizing Chrome, and see how it takes up the entire screen, giving a set of task bar style "tabs" at the top of your screen. If you switched of the IE task bar, chrome effectively replaces your desktop...

Now imagine getting your email through g-mail, doing your word processing / office productivity through Google's office productivity SAS, storing your documents in the "cloud", use Google calendar to manage your appointemnts, and watching all your TV through YouTube.

Chrome isn't designed to replace Internet Explorer - the name "Chrome" isn't a coincidence. It's designed to replace your OS. Specifically Windows.

I for one welcome our Google overlords

"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."

Which 'products' are Google referring to? I will avoid them at all costs in the future.

I agree, even going so far as saying Macs and Linux too.

Especially considering Linux apps aren't as usable as they could be - having a more usable online equivalent Google app would be a very tempting choice.

The way to combat this? Develop better applications so people won't want to use the Google options.

Which is how it should be, really.

"Chrome isn't designed to replace Internet Explorer - the name "Chrome" isn't a coincidence. It's designed to replace your OS. Specifically Windows.

I for one welcome our Google overlords"

Indeed. I long suspected their march towards an OS since they announced their web apps.

If they come up with a true replacement for Windows that actually runs Windows apps, that would be the ultimate dream.

However I think it's more likely it will be a thin client OS which runs web apps (ideally for them, their own apps). For many it may be enough if all you want is a browser and a means to write documents and send emails.

As you say, the browser is the next step towards a Google Desktop (better than their so called "Google Desktop" I hope).

Well I gave chrome a try, fair play its fast, the interface is a bit flat looking for want of a better description but the real killer for me, I cant install an adblock plus type plugin.

Firefox for me, even if its slower.

I don't get how they consider EULA fixed now.

giving them the right to use my data for their benefit is out of the question.

can't wait till V8 gets ported to firefox though! this will be cool.

Menus - none. Why do they have to follow the M$ route and get rid of them?

Options - pathetically limited.

Extensions/Addons - none.

Speed - slower than FF, because it downloads and displays all the ads.

I might be brave enough to give it a complete workthrough, but after 5 minutes of playing with it, I closed it and re-launched FF. Menus! Options! Add-ons (esp. ABP)!

If I send a book to a publisher, i'm pretty sure they want exclusive rights to publish my work. Otherwise, they wouldn't publish it.

Write your best seller in Google Docs, and you can't guarantee that right. Nobody would publish your work.

everyone who dosen't shop at a supermarket? Ever? Well if you do, then they are taking as much data as Google. Please stop your holier than thou attititude and this "look at me im so clever"

Also, @Chris, Please explain, how is anything you have siad about Google evil? They are making money from advertisers. How is that Evil? They are promoting there product againts another one. How is that Evil?

"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."

It doesn't state they won't siphon a copy of for themselves?

Apparently it is able to log keystrokes that it then sends to Google servers. This can be disabled by running it in certain modes but will everyone know that?

What is the long term future for Google when it is possible to use Firefox with AdBlock Plus to block ads automatically (when using AdBlock filterset.G updater), use NoScript to block Google Analytics etc and the Customise Google add-on to remove click tracking and anonymize the Google cookie UID? Surely more and more people are only going to cotton on to this way of doing things on the web?

"This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome."

So Google reserve the right to change the license retroactively? So when we 'agree' to an EULA we don't even know what it might, one day, consist of?

"everyone who dosen't shop at a supermarket? Ever? Well if you do, then they are taking as much data as Google. Please stop your holier than thou attititude and this "look at me im so clever""

Last time I checked, Tesco didn't keep a record of every product I looked at on their shelves, nor did they attempt to give me a unique identifier that I could show to other supermarkets in order to correlate collected data about me, and so on.

So no, not really. And not only is your argument flawed in it's particulars, but your logic is ridiculous. Changing the circumstances, but retaining the same logical premise we can easily get to "Look, I don't know why you are complaining that this guy tried to throw you off a bridge, several other people have already tried to do it !".

But hey, be my guest, submit yourself to a life of corporate slavery based on faulty reasoning and ignorance, see if I care. We won't miss you.

<quote>

All I need now is an explanation as to why the "Google Installer" tries to phone home every time a wake my machine from sleep or reboot.

</quote>

It has set up a task in the Windows task scheduler that is set to trigger after 10 minutes of idle time. I only knew it was trying to update as my firewall warned me of the outgoing connection and the program trying it. Killed the googleupdate.exe process in Task Manager and thought that was it. A while later, firewall alert again, and googleupdate.exe is running. No reference to it in startup or services so what was happening ? Eventually ran Process Explorer, which showed googleupdate.exe being triggered by svchost.exe. The services this instance of svchost.exe was contolling various services, including task scheduler. Had a look in the scheduled tasks and there it was, I say was, it isn't now :-p

Fair enough check for updates to a program, but isn't once a day, at startup of the program, triggered from the program itself, enough ?

However, gmail does have this (http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/legal_notices.html)

"Your Intellectual Property Rights

Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Gmail account. We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service."

Again, it's their 'universal terms' rubbish that scares everyone !

"everyone who dosen't shop at a supermarket? Ever? Well if you do, then they are taking as much data as Google."

Not likely when I don't use any loyalty cards and only pay with cash.

The EULA has a section explicitly giving them the right to serve adverts up to you. So they're hardly likely to implement an ad-block feature.

It also allows them to monitor everything you type into the browser and use it to decide what those adverts should be.

people dont realise they are a google-fanboy?

It probably isnt untill they have the browser/mail client/maps etc, removed from their lives and suddenly wonder where it has all gone...

I no longer care who takes over the world; They are all as corrupt and

depraved as each other.

But I do object to the rapidly becoming ubiquitous use of the non-verb

"to google" when referring to conducting a web search.

It really gets my goat, and my goat is not happy.

I agree that Tesco take a fair amount of data from me, but they pay me for it in the form of money off vouchers.

Google would take more data from me and pay me for it by using my bandwidth and processing power to serve me up adds.

I know that Google's tools are not free (inasmuch as someone has to pay for them) and I have no problem with the idea that if I use Google Maps (say) then the payment for doing so is to ignore some adds that will appear. Only a complete Freetard would expect something for absolutely nothing.

I downloaded Chrome and it looks pretty good. I would like an ad blocker but that is not a deal breaker. I would prefer it didn't add the scheduled dial home task, but I deleted it so that is not a deal breaker.

That I cannot use my laptop scroll pad to scroll upwards *is* a deal breaker. 2 hours of updating drivers, software and searching the web with no resolution is plenty enough for me. It may be a little faster than FF3 (I am not sure personally) to draw pages but it is much slower to work properly.

>> So Google reserve the right to change the license retroactively? So when we

>> 'agree' to an EULA we don't even know what it might, one day, consist of?

I see your point, though in this case they are only saying "we said you gave us this right but that's not cool so you can have it back". A retroactive license makes no sense unless the possibility therefor is defined in a previous license - which does in fact happen, I'm fairly sure.

"You have a best-selling novel your wrote in Google Docs? Fine, they want to use that fact to promote Google Docs."

So if they promote Google Docs with the offer...

"Sign up for Google Docs and get a free ebook" would be fine then.

I'm sure your publisher will not mind Google giving away copies of the book.

Do you think we should just trust Google to "not be evil"?

It also doesn't say they will.

It also doesn't say that they will launch Laser Wielding Monkeys marauding on the back of Voles reciting your documents you've uploaded and flying flags made from your images.

Mine's the one with the high reflective markings to shield me from the laser's!

Good God, people. Call yourself 1337 h4><><0r5?

Don't you know you just need to add sites like doubleclick.net to your hosts file with an IP address of 127.0.0.1 to stop any and all browsers on your PC ever contacting them?

Rank amateurs. And I mean RANK.

Making money from ad's isn't evil

Their intentions are,

anyone who thinks it's not a battle to wrestle control of the minority of internet users from FF, with adblockplus enabled is mistaken

Over 20% (more in Europe) of their business model is at threat from this software

The type of people who are inclined switch already have, the other 80% won't or can't

Microsoft may have business practices that aren't to everyone tastes, but they don't do it with their customer data to the same extent Google do

Thats what I mean by, Do no evil, indeed!

Because the EULA still contains this:

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, unless you sent off a first-class letter to MountainView, CA, informing Google that you are terminating your agreement, then you're still in violation of the EULA, and still buggered.

I don't recommend anyone download and run Beta software.

Unless they read El Reg!

Seriously, until the day that I do not find malware and viruses on my friends PCs, I will tell them to hold off on Beta software. It's only meant for techies and programmers who will understand the errors.

I'll keep playing with it and hope that they incorporate such useful little things like AdBlock , Script-Blocker, Active-X support, mouse gestures, etc...

It's a fun little browser. Just not up to snuff for actual use.

It's precisely this kind of land-grabbing shenanigan which undermines any kind of trust we might have in entities like Google. Someone from the legal department slips in an "all your ... belong to us" clause on the basis of it being "quite useful to have" (possibly at the insistence of their corporate boss, although that revelation would never emerge readily) and then we hear later that it's just a "mistake". Had people not complained, I doubt that parts of Google's business would have refrained from deriving the benefit from this supposed accident.

Meanwhile, the people at Phorm will once again be able to point to Google and claim that their own tricks are relatively benign. Some smoke and mirrors later - brush that opt-in under the carpet - and we can probably thank Google for getting Phorm and their pals off the hook.

The change to the EULA is progress. It still sucks that it has a EULA of any sort, but it's an improvement.

I'll be giving this a try though when the Linux version shows up (Windows version wouldn't run in WINE for me). I love my Firefox and wouldn't use anything else for my primary site testing (web developer, firebug + coldfire, tamper data et al make life *much* easier) but for day-to-day browsing Chrome sounds like it could be a winner in the light-and-fast category.

I'll be running it through a Privoxy proxy though, can't imagine Google being very amenable to ad-blocking add-ons so I'll just have to intercept the annoyances before they ever reach the browser! ;-)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who still knows about the hosts file. There's even a very nice chap who has one ready to go at http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

"Fair enough check for updates to a program, but isn't once a day, at startup of the program, triggered from the program itself, enough ?"

It's not checking for updates for the program (ok, it might be), but the main thing it's doing is constantly updating the anti-phishing list it maintains. It's really rather smart of them, because it sidesteps a major complaint people would have. They essentially had two options for anti-phishing, take the FF/IE approach of phoning home everytime you type in a URL to see if it matches with a known phishing site, or periodically download a list of "bad" URLs and do a local comparison. In the first instance, they'd be accused to spying on everything everyone does, which is exactly what MS is accused of doing with IE, and what people are already trying to claim Chrome does even without any proof. In the second case they have to make a trade off between constantly updating to catch a site as soon as it pops up, or updating less regularly and potentially missing a site for a while. Due to the inherently short-lived nature of most phishing sites (usually 24-48 hours), they need to update on a fairly regular basis or else they're not really doing much good, hence the phone home every 10 minutes or so.

Now that I've tossed some cold water on the tin-foil hat crowd I'll get my coat.

"12. Software updates

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

So, we have to agree in advance to allow Google to inject into our machines whatever code/functionality it wishes? Whenever it wishes? And with no promise of any notification much less explanation of new functionality?

Mine's the one I'm not minding and with the wad of cash, my car keys, credit card, and passport in the pocket.

"It still sucks that it has a EULA of any sort".

It's copyrighted. No licence = no right to use = pirated software.

There needs to be an EULA of *some* sort. It's just a pity that it's not more permissive. The only way around that is to make it Public Domain (i.e. uncopyrighted).

Even free / open source software has a licence. It's just that the GPL and other open licences allow you to do more with the software. The L in GPL stands for *Licence*. (Which makes it an EULA, as well as a licence agreement for non-end-users).

...Ronny

come on, the sources of Chrome are BSD licensed.

anyone with some knowledge in programming (knowledge that i don't have) can get the sources and make an AdBlock extension or compile an version of Chrome with AdBlocking and distribute it, and it would not breach any licenses.

aaaannd... there's the hosts file, already mentioned. We use that to block sites like orkut in our custommers who don't have an proxy server and wouldn't like their employees browsing Orkut, Facebook or MySpace all day long.

AC/Greg, a better one that I've been using for quite a while (AdBlock?? What's that??!?! :-P) is at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm - they also reroute spyware hosts and all sorts, and it's updated more often than the Everything Isn't one.

Now...Bill, pray do tell, since when is ActiveX useful? I've never needed ActiveX support in FF or in Safari. In fact, Lynx works just fine without ActiveX. As for mouse gestures - I'm a little old school and very keyboard bound, so I have to admit to not seeing the necessity of mouse gesture support. Tab, shift-tab, ctrl-tab, ctrl-shift-tab, the cursor keys, page up and page down are still (mostly) what I need. I rarely need to use the mouse when I'm browsing. Are you an iPhone user, perchance? Or perhaps you like TouchFlo and Surface? I browse 20 or 30 times faster than my mouse-bound colleagues, because all that I need is at my fingertips. Just my opinion, anyway:)

the kindergarden kids made poo-poo, mom will clean that up. the amount of BS they try to pull is of cosmic proportions. it could have been anyone. in this case it was Google. it's not a first either and i don't see any good reason that it should be a last. flameboys, fire for effect! the thing is... everyone wants to be in control. MS does it, Mozilla does it, Mac does it, Google does it. the only problem is... they try to conceal that, "wait, we're the good guys here!" they seem very open when in fact they are tricksters, the whole bunch of them.

- P.W. Dragoix

And what EULA does a book or magazine have? There is no difference in the copyright principals between them and software.

No software/book/magazine/comic/film/music recording/forum post NEEDS a EULA, the mere fact of letting you have a copy gives you the rights to use that copy. (See also "doctrine of first sale")