Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mattcutts.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 88 posts

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

#31

Post by pmichaud »

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.

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 terms that aren’t predatory because that is unusual and custom.

It sucks.

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

#32

Post by AlienRobot »

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.

But didn't DeviantArt ultimately decide to opt-in every work hosted on the platform to train its generative AI?

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

#34

Post by egypturnash »

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.

I definitely recall uproars over DA doing this exact same kind of overreach in their TOS! Possibly before you were around, doing the math on my user page there saying "deviant for 22y" tells me I opened my account there in 2003.

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

#35

Post by blagund »

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…

IANAL but at least in some EU countries you can't give away all rights preemptively for usecases not yet known at the time. So a blanket giveaway doesn't necessarily include AI training (it is a different question if the people performing that act actually care).

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

#36

Post by relaxing »

barbazoo wrote: post #12
isodev wrote: post #2

Interesting how things have changed in the past 17 years! Google of today, would rather own one's thoughts if they could, let alone things we write in their address bar.

One day they’ll write the things into the address bar for us :)

That’s basically the goal of the last decade of changes to Google search culminating in AI summaries: give you the information they think you want on the results page to stop you from leaving for another url.

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

#37

Post by coliveira »

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.

The Google founders were never out there to do any good. They started hijacking web content, with the excuse that it was a scientific project in Stanford, then right away converted that into a for profit corporation (similar to what OpenAI did). Next they planned to do the same with books, before they were stoped by a tsunami of lawsuits.

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

#38

Post by ludicrousdispla »

coliveira wrote: post #37
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.

The Google founders were never out there to do any good. They started hijacking web content, with the excuse that it was a scientific project in Stanford, then right away converted that into a for profit corporation (similar to what OpenAI did). Next they planned to do the same with books, before they were stoped by a tsunami of lawsuits.

they aspire to "don't be evil" which isn't exactly the same as "do be good"

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

#39

Post by jedberg »

In case anyone didn't know, Matt (the blog author) was the head of Webspam at the time, and a Distinguished Engineer at Google (and semi-official spokesperson for Google web spam issues). He left Google eight years after writing this, and went to the USDS for a few years, and then retired I believe.

Would be curious what Matt thinks of today's Google.

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

#40

Post by dang »

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.

...but still helps people on HN occasionally! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42918310
Post reply on HN