Google Chrome: Worrying

[spudtater]

Edit: the post under the cut was accurate when posted, but Google have since stated that it was all a big mistake and have swiftly changed their EULA. See:

• Google on Chrome EULA controversy: our bad, we'll change it, Ars Technica — N. Anderson, 03 Sep 2008
• Google Updating Chrome EULA to Be Less Creepy, Gizmodo — M. Buchanan, 03 Sep 2008
• Current Chrome EULA, with section 11 all but removed

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If you were considering downloading Google Chrome, here's one big reason you might want to reconsider:

Google Chrome, like most software these days, is subject to an End User License Agreement, a legal document outlining the rights that the user and the provider each enjoy. You have to agree to this when you install the software on your computer.

The Google Chrome EULA is a long and complex document, and hidden almost bang in the middle is a very troubling paragraph indeed:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that 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 licence 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 licence 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. (Emphasis mine.)

The 'Services' referred to are earlier defined as "Google’s products, software, services and websites". Therefore, astonishingly, we are forced to conclude that the EULA gives them permanent rights to any content you upload with their browser, including any posts you make to social networking sites, comments you leave via web forms, photos you upload via a browser, etc.

More succinctly: if you use their browser, Google owns your ass.

(And not just Google, either — the very next clause gives them the right to grant usage rights to any other site which they have an agreement with).

Now, just because the license gives Google all rights to anything you post, doesn't mean that they'll actually make use of those rights... does it? After all, we trust Google... don't we?
I'm not so sure. Google has always had a lax attitude to privacy, and it has always gotten away with it, not because it makes any great secret of what it is doing, but because people just don't seem to care enough. Google logs all details of any search you make, permanently. It keeps permanent records of any email that has ever been sent from or to a Gmail account. We understand this, and use it anyway, because what have we got to hide? We are, after all, not forced to use Google products. But perhaps, with this, we should start to care.

I for one will not be downloading Google Chrome until Section 11 is gone from the EULA. I advise you do likewise.

(Thanks to Charlie for bringing this to my attention, and to The Register for the original article.)

Comments

[brucec.livejournal.com]

Apparently someone's just copied the EULA from the Google Accounts page and probably not paid much attention in doing so. Considering they also decided to distribute Chrome on Windows via Microsoft's ClickOnce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClickOnce) loader it seems the person(s) responsible for distributing it were in a bit of a hurry.

There's an open source version of Chrome called Chromium - http://code.google.com/chromium/ - which is licensed under the BSD license.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Chrome is open source, period, but that doesn't stop you from being bound by the terms of an EULA if you agree to it upon installation.

I do hope the person releasing it was just in a hurry, but Google being the behemoth that it is, this seems a little... amateur.

You could build from source in order to avoid the problem, but that would involve stripping out all Google copyrights. Any version that you downloaded from a third-party site would similarly have to be stripped of copyrights. I don't think Joe Public will recognize the resultant application as a "real" Chrome browser, and thus he will probably be unwilling to install it.

(You never know, though. A fork could take off, if it gathers enough support.)

[brucec.livejournal.com]

I do hope the person releasing it was just in a hurry, but Google being the behemoth that it is, this seems a little... amateur.

Oh yes? :P

I really don't think QA look at the licenses: I was responsible for making the installer for several products over the years and don't remember being asked about the license I included in them. I suspect the guys who test the software generally just click through unless they see something obviously wrong.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Well, times are changing. How much analysis must have gone into choosing the right source code license for Chrome, after all? You'd have thought that the EULA would have had at least some attention upon it.

I suppose I can understand if the wrong EULA was included, given that this is a beta release, but still, I expect Google will be a lot more rigorous in this regard from now on!   8^)

[dsky.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, that the minute I saw Google were distributing a browser, the first thing I thought was "Oh god, privacy nightmare here we come".

I think I'll leave it alone. And not just because I don't have a machine that can run it!

It's based on Webkit isn't it? So uh, isn't it just Safari with a different Javascript engine (and I understand Safari's has either recently been revamped or is about to be)? It's not that exciting...

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Apparently the JavaScript engine is very much better. The application itself has been redesigned, as well, for stability and security. (Each of the tabs runs as a separate process in its own sandbox.)

More details in the official comic strip.

But yes, essentially there's nothing here that couldn't be applied to other browsers.