What an good example of responsiveness and openness from Google’s legal counsel. Chrome is their new browser that was released 2nd Sept, and here on 4th Sept they are updating the terms of service in response to users.
Whenever we release a product in beta as we just did with Google Chrome, we can always count on our users to come up with ways to improve it. This week’s example: several eagle-eyed users and bloggers have expressed concern that Section 11 of Google Chrome’s terms of service attempts to give us rights to any user-generated content “submitted, posted or displayed on or through” the browser.
Relevance to Bankwatch
Part of being effective as an internet company relates to this type of responsiveness. A typical Bank approach would be to review this for weeks, and make the changes quietly.
Note the blog post is issued by Mike Yang, Senior Product Counsel – a lawyer no less!
Bankwatch 
Now, now, Colin. There are lots of lawyers working at other places who are also highly responsive 😉
@Simon … 🙂 actually my lawyer reference was more intended to reflect the lawyer is openly using the blog. I have never seen that in a Bank situation.
As I recall the background story on this was that Google cut and paste the terms of service from elsewhere; other Google products. So what are these terms? Product-specific terms (e.g., for gmail, docs, etc.) seem to be governed by the general TOS (http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS).
While these TOS do state ownership and IP stay with the contributor (paragraph 9.4) the agreement does grant Google a perpetual license to use the content however they feel, forever (paragraph 11.1) and they can share the content with other companies (11.2).
The “Terms of Service Highlights” (http://www.google.com/accounts/tos/highlights/utos-us-en-h.html) puts a softer picture on the above, but I presume a lawyer would not take those to court.
So it’s fine and dandy that Google responded but in reality the terms they had originally in play would have given them ownership of all content displayed through the browser, regardless of where it came from. Not enforceable.
Ignoring the poor judgment that issuing such TOS might be, the real question is do I really want to allow Google perpetual access to my content and allow them to do with it what they will? As an individual, I might be less concerned. As a business however it might make me think about whether I use their office product or gmail, especially if they can share it with other companies.
A later article on this site commented on Cloud Computing. Google represents a material player in that realm. I suspect a TOS like this might put a crimp on adoption, may be just before the security, reliability, and functionality.
[I’m not a lawyer; read the sections for yourself]