Vital Update to Google Chrome terms of service
We recently posted about the new release of Google Chrome where we went into detail about the features & functionality it has built in, however what we (and Google) didn’t spot but you the eagle eyed bloggers did, was their unreasonable terms of service.
More specifically ‘Section 11 of Google Chrome’s terms of service attempts to give Google rights to any user-generated content “submitted, posted or displayed on or through” the browser.’
It would seem that Google have been inundated with complaints about this, and a Google spokes person explained the oversight below;
“You’ll notice if you look at our other products that many of them are governed by Section 11 of our Universal Terms of Service. This section is included because, under copyright law, Google needs what’s called a “license” to display or transmit content.
So to show a blog, we ask the user to give us a license to the blog’s content. (The same goes for any other service where users can create content.) But in all these cases, the license is limited to providing the service. In Gmail, for example, the terms specifically disclaim our ownership right to Gmail content.
So for Google Chrome, only the first sentence of Section 11 should have applied. We’re sorry we overlooked this, but we’ve fixed it now, and you can read the updated Google Chrome terms of service. If you’re into the fine print, here’s the revised text of Section 11:
11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.“
This will of course take some time to be copied across the 40+ languages, but we feel this is a fair response and the right outcome has been achieved!
Tags: Google Chrome, terms of service
