Some tempers flared up yesterday before being rather quickly tamped down by Google. The appearance that Google was claiming ownership of any material posted through Chrome was just due to some lazy lawyering.
Google spent a lot of time on its Chrome announcement comic book but neglected to make sure the right EULA was slapped into the Terms of Service. Those diligent enough and tolerant enough of legalese expressed some justifiable outrage at what appeared to be Google pwnage of any and all content appearing on Chrome. The language suggested that even third party Web content viewed belonged to Google, which would make the most audacious and ridiculous claim to rights in Internet history.
The Chrome TOS read this way:
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 that 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.
Cooler heads went huh? That can’t be right. Google’s own version of Robert Scoble, Matt Cutts, received word from Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, Rebecca Ward, that a copy and paste job was what set off unnecessary alarms. Ward released the following statement.
“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.”
Sure enough, it reads a bit easier, allowing Chrome users (and webmasters) to retain rights to their own content.
