Google Chrome's EULA

[Harold Tuttle]

http://tapthehive.s483.sureserver.com/discuss/This_Post_Not_Made_In_Chrome_Google_s_EULA_Sucks

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. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google 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. This license 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 license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations 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 license 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 license.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

What are "the Services"?

[AJ Dual]

What are "the Services"?

Microsoft is trying to cut off Google at the knees with it's next browser and it's "direct search" capability.

Google's lifeblood and income stream is the user search information on user they gather (the services) for targeted web marketing. Without that, the income and stock price support that funds all the other cool but not profit generating (yet) Google tools dries up.

Have you used "Goog 411" 1-800-466-4411 and wondered why they provide that service for free? (Pretty impressive voice recognition BTW, I use it alot to avoid the $.50/$1 411 fees from my cell provider) It turns out they're using the free service to generate a MASSIVE speech recognition database by recording all of Goog 411's users to eventually allow for running it in reverse to allow text searches for the spoken content of YouTube and Google Video.

So you could one day type in, I dunno... "It shoots through schools", and it'll come back with a clip of the movie "Johnny Dangerously". However it's not from meta tags or text descriptions, but pulled right from the audio of (Joe Piscapo?) saying that line in the movie.

[Harold Tuttle]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10031703-2.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

[K Frame]

Yeah, so what's your point?

That's pretty common.

Are you pissed? Are you enthralled? Are you appalled?

Give us a clue here.

[Werewolf]

Yeah, so what's your point?

That's pretty common.

Are you pissed? Are you enthralled? Are you appalled?

Give us a clue here.

I've got no dog in this race, as google and I rarely cross pathes, but the way it reads to me is, "if you put something on our network using our Chrome browser - then we own it too and can do what ever we want with it, including changing it and making money off of it whether you like it or not".

Seems pretty clear to me. Not to my liking and I imagine others will choose not to use Chrome because of the licensing/EULA terms. I passed up a sweet deal with a commercial/military game designer to design scenarios for a tank sim used by militaries around the world and hard core armor gamers because of a thing like that. Had nothing to do with the money - hell, I'd have done 'em for free if they'd asked nice, but the sucker wanted to own the copyrights and wouldn't give me veto power over changes he might want to make.  Sometimes us artistes just don't want folk monkeyin' wit our stuff.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

The onerous license restriction specifically apply to "the Services", and to data you "submit, post, or display" using "the Services". 

IMO, the license doesn't make any sense if applied to a browser.  A browser isn't a service, it's a piece of software, and you generally don't use a browser to submit content or data to Google. 

Heck, most of the content that you'd pass through a browser isn't yours to license or give away in the first place.  You can't agree to give a license to Google for most of the stuff you submit through Chrome even if you agree to do so.  Surely the Google lawyers know this.

Something doesn't add up here.

[AZRedhawk44]

you generally don't use a browser to submit content or data to Google.

You use internet explorer to upload pictures to Photobucket.

If you used Chrome to upload those same pictures, I read this EULA as saying that Google now has IP rights to your pictures.

You can use a browser as an FTP client, and if you backup your computer to an FTP server somewhere and use Chrome as the client, Google now has IP rights to all of your data you backed up.  That novel you are writing, the software package you created, the porn archive you have, the CAD drawing for that nifty engine that runs on mousefarts.  Whatever.

Google owns it now.

Doesn't seem right to me.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Doesn't seem right to me.

Doesn't seem possible to me. 

It would only work that way if every Chrome user had full rights to each and every bit of data he passes through the browser.  You can't grant a non-exclusive license to content you don't own in the first place. 

Then there is the technical issue of how to get all that data back to Google.  Is Chrome going to copy and store all of those photos and APS posts and file backups you transfer via Chrome, then secretly zip them off to Google servers when you aren't looking? 

Chrome is open source, so it would be nigh impossible for Google to slip in spyware behavior of that magnitude without getting caught red handed.

[Marnoot]

Linky: Google Updating Chrome EULA to Be Less Creepy

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Ha!  Looks like Google didn't bother to proofread their EULA before releasing the browser. 

It seems that nobody reads the EULAs, not even the authors!   

[brimic]

Microsoft is trying to cut off Google at the knees with it's next browser and it's "direct search" capability.

I hope they succeed. Google annoys me, their founders annoy me, having to use Google annoys me. Microsoft and Apple annoy me too, just not as much.

[RevDisk]

If you used Chrome to upload those same pictures, I read this EULA as saying that Google now has IP rights to your pictures.

[snip]

Google owns it now.

Doesn't seem right to me.

That would be due to the fact that google would NOT own your IP.  They'd merely be granted a free license to it.  "a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license"   

Still, absolutely a horrid idea.  They'd legally be allowed to publish anything you did in the browser without recourse.  At a profit, from which I gather you'd get notta.

[Dntsycnt]

I love Google more than I love pizza.  And I really love me some pizza.

But Firefox is like a body part now...I'm not sure I'd survive the switch.

[Harold Tuttle]

The thing that google wants to "do" with everyones content is use it to support algorithmic data shaping technologies.

All the google 411 voice to text input data is being used to shape processes to make contextual based searching a reality.

They don't really care what you say, they want to figure out how we say things...

[Manedwolf]

Just worry if they add voice to the Google engine, and it finishes conversations with "END OF LINE."

[Brad Johnson]

I think I just saw a Recognizer go by... 

Brad

[AJ Dual]

The thing that google wants to "do" with everyones content is use it to support algorithmic data shaping technologies.

All the google 411 voice to text input data is being used to shape processes to make contextual based searching a reality.

They don't really care what you say, they want to figure out how we say things...

Thanks for saying it much more concisely than I could. 

[Desertdog]

I figure that if millions of people change from Microsoft to Google, then my Microsoft connection should speed up.