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Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

mattcutts.com

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Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#51

Post by Tostino »

sdrinf wrote: post #49

Mozilla is sooo fucked here. On one hand, it would take them approx ~1 sentence of blog to say "We won't sell your input info to anyone" and this drama goes away. OTOH: if the currently pending court case on anti-monopoly bars google from making payments to mozilla (which is about ~90%++ of their revenue), mozilla truly, and well is fucked. Meaning -they need to diversify, and they know it; they can't sell browsers,…

They've had a decade and a half now to invest and diversify. I've been incredibly disappointed in every attempt.

Honestly, just investing the good portion of the revenue from Google in an index fund and treating it like an endowment would probably have done better than they ended up.

Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#52

Post by tptacek »

ur-whale wrote: post #8

Matt Cutts was one of the Google search OGs. The kind of cultural values (e.g. make user happy all else will follow) he and a number of other original Google employees believed in and tried to defend have loooong been overridden by the Sundars and other Prabakhars who only kowtowed to the short-term demands of wall street. Cutts, Ben Gomes and similar-minded do-gooders have all neatly been benched a long time ago.

"Prabakhars"?

Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#53

Post by amelius »

> 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.

Ok, so what other Google products do want rights to the things I do?

Smells fishy, to say the least.

Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#54

Post by nitwit005 »

20after4 wrote: post #22
egypturnash wrote: post #20

This sort of agreement keeps on popping up. Again and again. The most forgiving reading of the intent of this sort of agreement is that "it is the basic function of a web browser to transfer your stuff across the internet, and it is the basic function of a website to do stuff like make thumbnails of your images and send them to people looking at your stuff, and you are cool with us doing this" but it always ends up b…

I worked at deviantArt back in the early 2010s, they notably had a user agreement that did not claim any rights more than necessary, and it was revocable by the user without jumping through hoops. So it's not necessary to do things this way, companies do it intentionally because they don't care about the rights of their users.

This just seems like the right approach. It's never going to be safe to claim the rights to user uploaded content without verifying they hold the rights to it in the first place.

Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#55

Post by miki123211 »

20after4 wrote: post #22
egypturnash wrote: post #20

This sort of agreement keeps on popping up. Again and again. The most forgiving reading of the intent of this sort of agreement is that "it is the basic function of a web browser to transfer your stuff across the internet, and it is the basic function of a website to do stuff like make thumbnails of your images and send them to people looking at your stuff, and you are cool with us doing this" but it always ends up b…

I worked at deviantArt back in the early 2010s, they notably had a user agreement that did not claim any rights more than necessary, and it was revocable by the user without jumping through hoops. So it's not necessary to do things this way, companies do it intentionally because they don't care about the rights of their users.

Companies do it because lawsuits are "explosive", if the Chrome team fucks up, they can bring down not only Chrome, but potentially the entirety of Google itself.

Deviant Art's only product is Deviant art, so the upside in goodwill from a user-friendly agreement might be greater than the downside of some remote possiblity of a lawsuit. This isn't true about Google, which has many other products and revenue streams.

Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#56

Post by remus »

pmichaud wrote: post #31
20after4 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at deviantArt back in the early 2010s, they notably had a user agreement that did not claim any rights more than necessary, and it was revocable by the user without jumping through hoops. So it's not necessary to do things this way, companies do it intentionally because they don't care about the rights of their users.

I am building a company that accepts user generated data, and one surprising struggle is getting my lawyers to stop writing shitty, overbroad, abusive TOS. They are just so used to it, and all the templates and boiler plate is designed to give me everything and the user nothing. And if I want to do better by ny users I have to fight and cajole my own lawyers and pay extra for them to do the extra work of writing term…

> It sucks.

It depends on your perspective surely? As a lawyer your job is typically to protect your client from legal risk, so if users are happy to sign a really expansive set of terms (which experience shows is the case) that gives grants lots of permission to do stuff with their data then that's low risk. If you as a business don't want that then you need to make it explicit that you're willing to take on some extra risk.

Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#57

Post by ur-whale »

tptacek wrote: post #52
ur-whale wrote: post #8

Matt Cutts was one of the Google search OGs. The kind of cultural values (e.g. make user happy all else will follow) he and a number of other original Google employees believed in and tried to defend have loooong been overridden by the Sundars and other Prabakhars who only kowtowed to the short-term demands of wall street. Cutts, Ben Gomes and similar-minded do-gooders have all neatly been benched a long time ago.

"Prabakhars"?

> Prabakhars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhakar_Raghavan

also:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

And you are correct, there's just one. The additional 's' was meant to mean "and others very much like him".

Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#58

Post by JohnnyLarue »

egypturnash wrote: post #20

This sort of agreement keeps on popping up. Again and again. The most forgiving reading of the intent of this sort of agreement is that "it is the basic function of a web browser to transfer your stuff across the internet, and it is the basic function of a website to do stuff like make thumbnails of your images and send them to people looking at your stuff, and you are cool with us doing this" but it always ends up b…

It's important to remember that no matter what they write in the agreement, they can will still be sued, and they can and may still be found at fault. So the utility of edge case disclaimers are questionable at best, and indicate 'evil' intent at worst.

Re: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)

#60

Post by HWR_14 »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #50
userbinator wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they going to do? Stop using the internet? Stop using newer versions of the software. Firefox is open-source, so forking and fixing the older versions before these hostile changes is not impossible.

I hope this is true. I don't know how to maintain a web browser, hopefully those that do are willing to do the work to keep it running.

Does a web browser need maintenance beyond security fixes?
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