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! ;-)
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 …
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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."
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?
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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..
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...
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)?
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.
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?