Mammoth Blog

Google Chrome Does Not Own Your Stuff
Jason Lee Miller | Staff Writer

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 conten