Desicritics Comments on Product Review: Google Chrome - The New New Thing

Comment by Aaman

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 10:51:33 EDT

The search engine has decided to remove the section from the end-user licencing agreement that gave the company "a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through the new browser". Several web users raised copyright and privacy concerns about portions of the licensing agreement shortly after Google launched Chrome earlier this week. Some critics suggested the language would allow Google to use any web content displayed in Chrome without getting copyright permission. Google said it borrowed language from other products, "in order to keep things simple for our users" when it inserted the copyright provision in the Chrome licence.

Comment by Amy Cantor

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 01:53:26 EDT

When you initially install Chrome, you do have an option to "customize options" - you can import IE bookmarks and such from there.

Comment by Aaman

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 15:57:51 EDT

Good News,

Rebecca Ward, the Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome: "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."

Comment by Aaman

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:38:46 EDT

BTW, anyone remember William Gibson's story about a high class madam who was taken down by hackers. Her name was Chrome, and the story was called "Burning Chrome":)

Comment by Aaman

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:33:04 EDT

The Internet lawyers seem to have parsed the language to determine that it primarily refers to Google Services like Google Docs, Blogspot, and Youtube, ergo the finer print: "This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services ..." One can probably rest easy and we probably anyway sold our sould and private rights when we got our birth certificates...

Comment by Aaman

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:21:02 EDT

Scary update:Google owns your content if posted through Chrome

Granting 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' Chrome is coming it rich.

Wonder if it makes sense to use Google Chrome?

Comment by media kingdom

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 11:43:37 EDT

i'm willing to try it out just to see if it works more efficiently than FireFox... if it's faster than Firefox and isn't IE, then i'll use it

Comment by media kingdom

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 11:41:06 EDT

i'm willing to try it out just to see if it works more efficiently than FireFox... if it's faster than Firefox and isn't IE, then i'll use it

Comment by temple Stark

Tue, 2 Sep 2008 23:02:02 EDT

nice work. I'm mac so cannot even try. It's unlikely I'd let Google invade my web experience more, however, but I'll try when they pull they're finger out and create mac version (It's built with Web kit like Safari so WTF?)

Comment by David Gerard

Tue, 2 Sep 2008 19:23:31 EDT

"We are so, so happy with Google Chrome," mumbled Mozilla CEO John Lilly through gritted teeth. "That most of our income is from Google has no bearing on me making this statement." - http://notnews.today.com/?p=57