Chrome's EULA ridiculous - grants Google license to all the content you submit

http://tapthehive.com/discuss/This_Post_Not_Made_In_Chrome_Google_s_EULA_Sucks

by mati • 18 years ago

45 29 18 years ago

tapthehive.com

litewulf2• 18 years ago

The official line right now is that the legal team at Google is aware of the situation and is taking a look.

Yay legal!

thalur• 18 years ago

Taking a look at what? All this lovely new data they can use to make money? :p

Agathos• 18 years ago

And where were they when this was written in the first place?

Dauntless• 18 years ago

I guess it was just to test if anyone cares. I still don't think they will change anything because that's what they are aiming for, information control.

misterbwong• 18 years ago

My guess would be that this EULA was derived from a boilerplate Google EULA with a search/replace done on it. Apparently, it's very similar to the Google Docs EULA.

enomar4• 18 years ago

Here's a quote from their legal team...

"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."

Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome

boredguy84• 18 years ago

Link?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10031703-56.html

partoa• 18 years ago

My greatest surprise in all this is that people actually read EULAs.

streety• 18 years ago

For open source software the clause I found most odd was "10.2 You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing."

The incompatibility of this is covered by clause 1.2, ". . . Open source software licences for Google Chrome source code constitute separate written agreements. To the limited extent that the open source software licences expressly supersede these Universal Terms, the open source licences govern your agreement with Google . . ."

It's still odd though.

aggieben• 18 years ago

yup...just proves the suspicion: the software guys just copy/pasted some boilerplate and inserted a few specific clauses without re-reading the whole document or double-checking what it really says.

The OP is correct, though: Google has an army of lawyers and should have caught this.

noonespecial• 18 years ago

Google should spend ts considerable resources coming up with a "compiler" for legal docs. You just type in s few one line sentences describing the rights you'd like to have and the compiler checks for consistency errors and then generates a legal document (probably 100 pages long) filled with all of the right "magic words".

enomar4• 18 years ago

At the very top of the download EULA...

"These Terms of Service apply to the executable code version of Google Chrome. Source code for Google Chrome is available free of charge under open source software license agreements at http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html."

Makes sense to me.

sfamiliar• 18 years ago

sometimes i wonder if the executives ever read their own legal documents. i read every legal document i sign or agree to, because to not do so opens up risk. but before they're released, legal documents should be vetted by a number of people in the company, especially those who are technically inclined. it often feels like many legal docs, terms of use documents, aup's and what not are written by lawyers who really don't understand the essence of what they're doing.

and clearly, there is a class of lawyer who's testing the boundaries of intellectual property law. too little of this has been challenged and brought to court.

andreyf• 18 years ago

That's about as enforceable as signing away your first-born.

gojomo• 18 years ago

This is similar to the situation where, for at least a little while, the EULA for Safari on Windows only allowed its use on 'Apple-labeled' computers.

I find it oddly reassuring that companies don't pay any more attention to EULAs than users.

stcredzero• 18 years ago

They probably threw it over the wall to an apathetic and clueless legal staff. Looks like Google took a server-oriented web application EULA and slapped it on Chrome.

MicahWedemeyer• 18 years ago

Let's release Lawrence Lessig on these guys. That guy knows what it really means to "do no evil"

invisible• 18 years ago

Perhaps the dumbest thing of all is bloggers don't actually read up before posting blogs like this particular one. One of the developers debunked the idea, he listed when the browser communicates with Google ( here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-communication/ ), and he insisted that they hold no rights in a public blog post that can be cited by any two-bit lawyer from the way-back-machine. Scandalous of them, huh?

enomar4• 18 years ago

Settle down. It appears they just used the default EULA that comes with all their "Services". They have since realized that they need a different EULA. You'll probably see a new (retroactive) Chrome EULA come out shortly.

boredguy84• 18 years ago

These are the universal terms of service that apply to all Google products: http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS. It's entirely reasonable given that it limits what they can use and it protects them against, say, Pepsi uploading a document on Google Docs then suing Google for hosting that document.

enomar4• 18 years ago

A new EULA has been posted...

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

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.

Chrome's EULA ridiculous - grants Google license to all the content you submit

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