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Reading Google Chrome's Fine Print

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday September 03, @05:03AM
from the here-be-tygers dept.
Privacy Google
Much ink and many electrons are being spilled over Google's Chrome browser (discussed here twice in recent days): from deep backgrounders to performance benchmarks to its vulnerability to a carpet-bombing flaw. The latest angle to be explored is Chrome's end-user license agreement. It does not look consumer-friendly. "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."

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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

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  • This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrEldarion (114072) on Wednesday September 03, @05:08AM (#24856261)

    I doubt this has anything to do with Chrome. It's taken straight out of their Google Accounts terms: https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl=en [google.com]

    See point 11.1.

    • Re:This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Swizec (978239) on Wednesday September 03, @05:14AM (#24856283) Homepage
      There's a difference between having an EULA for google services and an EULA for google browser and they should be different. I can understand anything I upload to google being google's property henceforth, but anything I upload using their browser? Basically ... if I use their browser anything I do online becomes their property ... how is that good for me or anyone?

      This is yet another sign of google's impending world domination. Won't be long before they own everything people use from software, to clothes, to spouses and children.

      • Re:This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Informative)

        by FilterMapReduce (1296509) on Wednesday September 03, @05:29AM (#24856353)

        Google has announced that Chrome is to be open source. If this has the conventional meaning of being licensed under an OSI-approved license, or anything remotely resembling one, then a EULA would be redundant and unenforceable. (Even if Google tried to exercise some implicit contractual terms around the use of Chrome, someone could simply exercise the permissions given under the open source license to repackage the code under a different name with no EULA.)

        I'm not going to RTFA at this hour, but the only reasonable interpretation is that the terms in question apply only to Google's services and not the browser software itself. Anything else would be audacious even for a company without Google's mostly good reputation.

      • Re:This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rugatero (1292060) on Wednesday September 03, @05:49AM (#24856437)

        Basically ... if I use their browser anything I do online becomes their property ... how is that good for me or anyone?

        Actually the terms say that you grant a royalty-free licence, not ownership. It's still an unacceptable condition, but I feel the distinction is important.

      • Re:This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Idaho (12907) on Wednesday September 03, @06:02AM (#24856525)

        There's a difference between having an EULA for google services and an EULA for google browser and they should be different.

        Here is the privacy policy for Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/privacy.html [google.com]

        It does not mention the terms in this article, which clearly seem related to google services and not the browser.

        Mind you, the privacy policy does mention unique ID's for each browser, and sending them to google every time you start the browser. Also, Chrome automatically installs a GoogleUpdate executable and adds it to your autoruns; I really hate it when applications do that. So it's still pretty bad, but not in exactly the way this "article" makes it out to be.

    • Re:This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Informative)

      by tirerim (1108567) on Wednesday September 03, @05:17AM (#24856301)
      Even if it's part of their generic license, how it applies to Chrome is still important. What does "submitting, posting, or displaying" even mean in the context of a browser? It seems at least slightly plausible that could be interpreted to include personally generated content that the user views with the browser. I hope that it doesn't really work that way, but I am not a lawyer.

      • Re:This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Funny)

        by hdparm (575302) on Wednesday September 03, @05:46AM (#24856425) Homepage

        It's really strange stuff. Someone might think that even transfers/deposits one makes while accessing own bank account also belong to Google. Or stuff someone buys on Ebay. Once on-line voting and Chrome become prevalent, Google will also become The President.

        • Re:This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, @05:48AM (#24856433)

          Imagine an even more far fetched scenario - your company uses some kind of web mail. One could abstract that Google have some claim over any emails and attachments you send/receive through Chrome.

          Clearly this is not what Google intend and they have pasted their generic EULA into place until such times as they can afford to pay for a legal representative to write a shiny new one.

    • Re:This is not Chrome-specific. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by minginqunt (225413) on Wednesday September 03, @05:45AM (#24856419) Homepage Journal

      The frequency of badsummary on this site makes me sad.

      I bet the editors of this site never intended the tag system to be used primarily as a mechanism for drawing attention to their own incompetence.

  • Misread much? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by onlysolution (941392) on Wednesday September 03, @05:09AM (#24856267)
    It looks to me like the out-of-context excerpts here all pertain to your use of Google's services with Chrome. All of these services state that you agree to let Google use the data you generate so I perhaps these clauses are present in Chrome's EULA to cover your use of their apps in Gears?

    • Re:Misread much? (Score:5, Informative)

      by zby (398682) on Wednesday September 03, @06:13AM (#24856589) Homepage

      Right at the beginning of the EULA you have definition of the word Service - as it is used in that document:

      Google Chrome Terms of Service

      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 [google.com].

      1. Your relationship with Google

      1.1 Your use of Googleâ(TM)s products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the âoeServicesâ in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Google.

      So when in the point 9.1. they use the word 'Service' it clearly means: "products, software, services and web sites" and that includes Chrome.

  • Use Chromium (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, @05:14AM (#24856281)

    I suggest you use the OpenSource version of Chrome , which is BSD licensed and has no EULA you need to agree to.

    I think they made this separation of Chrome and Chromium to keep the "Chrome" brand under their control while still making the browser open source.

    Builds:
    http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/

    Info:
    http://www.chromium.org

  • A turn off? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hachiman (68983) on Wednesday September 03, @05:16AM (#24856293)

    Whilst the auto update feature sort of makes sense (if you discount a malicious user working out how to auto-update an installed copy with their own code), I detest ads, possibly in common with the rest of the world. Ok, it is their revenue, but it's bad enough seeing them on pages, but having them eve more targetted???

    Oh yes, and the autoupdate program (googleupdate.exe) still executes at startup even after Chrome is uninstalled. I know it's a beta, but that's just sloppy.

    Or is it???

  • adj: Unconscionable (Score:5, Funny)

    by jackb_guppy (204733) on Wednesday September 03, @05:17AM (#24856303)

    Google lawyers may need to learn a new word that ATT was just taught... Unconscionable

  • So far so good. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Blimey85 (609949) on Wednesday September 03, @05:18AM (#24856307)
    I'm using it right now just to try it out. I'm a huge Firefox fan and have been for several years now. I started using Firefox back when it was just a beta, long before version 1 finally hit. As a web programmer I think I use Firefox more than any other program and I've really come to like it. It does have a few issues that I'd like to see resolved however, and I think Chrome might be going in the right direction. Memory usage in Firefox is nuts and always has been. After browsing for a couple of hours I can close all tabs and still use nearly 400 megs of memory. That's a serious problem. Sure I can restart Firefox at that point and get the memory back, but I shouldn't need to. Also, when Firefox is using more than 300 megs on my machine, it starts to slow down. I had a gig and a half in my computer so I thought maybe I needed more. I bought another gig and brought my total to 2.5 gigs, yet Firefox still begins to crap out around the 300 meg threshold.

    From the comic it seems like Google really wants to take a new approach to how browsers deal with memory and I think Firefox could learn from that. Is that enough to make me switch? No, not at all. I rely on a number of Firefox extensions and unless Google makes Chrome compatible with Firefox extensions, or comes up with their own system and then develops a tool to auto-port Firefox extensions, I don't think a lot of people are going to switch. Back when I was running 1.5.3 (I think it was .3) and had a number of stability issues I might have given Chrome serious consideration but I only installed it tonight to see what it's all about. When I'm done playing it's back to Firefox I go.

    • Re:So far so good. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BBFire (825138) on Wednesday September 03, @05:44AM (#24856413)
      Yes! All looking good / working fine here too. Simple no future for me though without AdBlock (or some equivalent).. thought I'd seen the last of those damn smileys forever. "Do no evil".. cmon, it's tantamount to torture nowadays to leave a user unsure if the next tab is going to greet them with a nauseating flash anim or that buzzing noise..

  • jumping to conclusions (Score:5, Informative)

    by speedtux (1307149) on Wednesday September 03, @05:35AM (#24856385)

    I think you're jumping to conclusions; that is Google's usual "content license", and something they need in order to offer services to you. I don't know how you think it applies to the browser. If you're trying to imply that Google is attempting to claim that everything you do with Chrome belongs to them, you're wrong.

  • forget the fine print - it's phones home like mad (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, @05:41AM (#24856405)

    This thing is lighting up my firewall constantly, during install, operation and uninstall.

    Even after uninstall it leaves GoogleUpdate.exe installed and running and pinging google every hour.

    I'm sticking with Firefox 3.1's javascript compiler instead:
    http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

  • I AM SO HAPPY! (Score:5, Funny)

    by hyperz69 (1226464) on Wednesday September 03, @06:12AM (#24856581)
    This is totally awesome and fair! This is the best thing to happen on the internet! GOOGLE IS THE BEST COMPANY EVER!

    "Posted with Chrome, edited for content by Google"

    • Re:It wont even install for me (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, @05:18AM (#24856305)

      Prepare to be even less impressed and look at the V8 src, they only have codegen for ia32 and arm. Plenty of hardcoded platform specific (windows) guff in the browser codebase too.

      This stuff might have been acceptable in 2003 but it's -DEPIC_FAIL for 2008.

      • guff? (Score:5, Funny)

        by stupidflanders (1230894) on Wednesday September 03, @05:37AM (#24856395)
        I think... I think he's trying to communicate with us, but I can't quite make out what he's saying.

        • Re:guff? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, @05:56AM (#24856481)

          I think... I think he's trying to communicate with us, but I can't quite make out what he's saying.

          Please do feel free to look up [google.com] any short, monosyllabic, four letter words that are above your level of reading comprehension.

          "Growser" is currently Windows only. It's got hard coded registry access and other such retardation throughout the code. Where you might think lib/ the chromium developers think chrome_dll/ and so on.

      • Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Candid88 (1292486) on Wednesday September 03, @06:11AM (#24856575)

        And if you think google are just using the information "to allow you to customise things and target ads towards you" then you're having a laugh.

        At least government is bound by freedom-of-information acts, elections etc. so we can actually find out about things like RFID tags. There's absolutely no way to tell what Google are up to with the data.

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