Relax, Google Won’t Take Your Content If You Use Chrome
By Anna Johnson on September 4th, 2008It’s all about Chrome this week, isn’t it? What can I say – Google Chrome is major news. It could be a category killer – in at least two categories: browsers and operating systems.
On to an issue that Read Write Web brought to the fore a couple of days ago: the Chrome terms of service.
Apparently, in its original form, the terms stated that while a user owned and retained rights to any content submitted, posted or displayed on or through Chrome… Google would also get a “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute” such content. Yes, that would include ANYTHING you wrote or uploaded via Chrome, from blog posts to passwords to credit card details.
It seems we can relax – Google has removed the offensive clause and now includes this in its Chrome terms of use:
“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 which subsist in that Content…”
How did the original wording get into the Chrome terms of use in the first place? Was Google being evil or was this something the lawyers overlooked? As a lawyer familiar with reading and writing plenty of terms of use it pains me to admit it, but… it was probably an omission due to copying and pasting the terms from elsewhere!
And you know what? This is one instance where Google’s “launch quickly and iterate” is NOT appropriate. As I wrote the other day, this approach IS desirable for launching many kinds of products. But it’s definitely not desirable when it comes to legal terms.
Source: Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Updated: Does Google Have Rights to Everything You Send Through Chrome?”, Read Write Web, September 3, 2008, Google Chrome Terms of Use
