Google Chrome Does Not Own Your Stuff

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 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 content.