While Google’s new Chrome web browser has been met with a lot of praise and positive responses (well, mostly, at least), there has been one nagging issue that arose quite quickly after people got their hands on Chrome: the End User License Agreement accompanying the browser. It more or less granted Google the rights to everything seen or transmitted through the browser. Google now changed the EULA, saying it was a big case of woopsiedoopsie.
Tap the Hive found out that the Google Chrome EULA contained an ‘all your base are belong to us’ clause that didn’t really seem to fit with the company’s well-known but cheesy ‘Don’t be evil’ motto.
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 which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
This more or less comes down to the fact that anything that you post on your weblog, OSNews, or that lesbian spanking forum gardening forum now belonged to Google, and that they could use that material without ever sending you a penny. This is not very nice and ‘unevil’ of everyone’s favourite fluffy bunny rainbow company. However, Google was quick to respond, and according to Ars Technica, Google removed the clause from the EULA.
Google’s Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, now tells Ars Technica that the company tries to reuse these licenses as much as possible, “in order to keep things simple for our users.” Ward admits that sometimes “this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don’t apply well to the use of that product” and says that Google is “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.”
So, all is pink and feathery again in Google Land. Rests me to say that I am exceptionally pleased by Chrome, and that it has replaced Firefox as my browser of choice on Windows within a heartbeat. The speed (even on my 512Mb RAM/slow SSD Aspire One!), the mutlithreading, the clean user interface – it’s hard to resist. And it’s only a beta!
And, more importantly [insert drum-roll] – I’m using tabs. In a browser. I’m using tabs in a web browser. Anyone who has dealt with me on a slightly more personal level knows my utter and complete disdain for tabbed browsing. So, what is different? I really can’t put my finger on it, but I think it’s mostly due to the placement of the tabs: atop the window. This makes the tabs look a lot more tangible, more ‘real’ – in much the same way that wrapping virtual desktops around a cube made them usable for me.
I’m not going to review Chrome (it’s a browser, for Pete’s sake), but I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. Be sure to give it a go.
there are a few nagging issues.
I am just plain mad at google for this. they blatently ripped off all the good features from Opera, who will get no credit for this… you know what instead of my long rant I was going to write read at least the first link, you will see what i mean.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/03/opera_boss_on_chrome/
even though he thinks that imitation is flattery, this browser will take what market share opera would have rightfully deserved by having the same if not better feature set and push opera further away from general public knowledge.
also, for all those who have seen the little cartoon google has, here is a more acurate one.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/02/google_chrome_comic_funnies…..
Except for the fact that Opera does TOO MUCH. That’s what’s been putting people off. “Opera 12 released, washes your laundry!”
Seriously, Opera doesn’t gain a lot of market share because it tries to be too much. I want a browser, not an emailtorrentbrowser with a doomsday device built-in. Sure, you an turn it all off, but why go through all that hassle when I can simply download Firefox (or Chrome) and get what I wanted all the time: a webbrowser.
That argument would make sense, if it weren’t for the fact that evidence suggests the majority of users want more than a browser. Consider the number of, and popularity of Firefox add-ons and how many people would argue that this is what gives it the edge. As for Opera being more bloated, it is a smaller download, and occupies a smaller footprint once installed, so please tell me what makes it bloated? I’m not saying Opera is perfect, there are issues I would like to see resolved, but I do think that claiming its trouble with being generally adopted is due to its feature-set, or interface is oversimplified and inaccurate.
**As a side point, every customer I’ve ever introduced to Opera I’ve also introduced to Firefox, to get them away from IE, and every single one uses Opera as their preferred browser.**
amen.
Would that be the same evidence that says that 85% of people are using Internet Explorer, presumably perfectly happy with it being just a browser?
Opera certainly isn’t bloated program-wise. If I remember correctly Opera take up less space than vanilla Firefox.
Anyway, the interface is bloated. There’s too much options, too much choices, too many menu items.
Opera is the Photoshop of browsers. You can do a thousand things, and all those things you can do in a number of ways.
Now this isn’t all bad, and has a lot to do with philosophy. Opera has a philosohpy to provide everyone, *including* powerusers with whatever capability they want.. right out of the box.
And they’re very good at it!
Personally I’ve come to not like this philosophy, but I can’t deny that Opera kicks ass at implementing it.
Firefox on the other hand has the philosophy that things should be simple and not overwhelm. That the “base” should only satisify normal users. (And let’s face it, most uf here at OSnews are not normal users. We’re geeks!) And then provide capability to extend instead.
That being said: I know a number of novices that use Opera. (And no: they don’t use ANY of the power-user features, or are aware that they actually have a mail-client, IRC-client and a bitorren client.)
There is a _big_ difference between the addons support in Firefox and Opera: the addon support doesn’t make the browser itself bloated, the base is fairly clean and easy, and you only add functionality you want, and you can disable or uninstall them anytime. Basically any user can add their favourite addons and make the browser to their liking. I can’t do that with Opera, and that’s why I left it a long time ago.
Now with Chrome, granted, it takes ideas from all over the place. But the result is good, if not nice, and hopefully it will only get better, and stay open. Now, if only they’d add real plugin/addon support so people can start porting their addons over, but I don’t see any adblocker or noscpriter plugin in Chrome anytime soon, which – besides some other half dozen addons – makes it a no-go for me, at least for the time being.
But, until then, I use it happily for Google’s mail and calendar, since they just fly (!) with Chrome.
I’d say they are on the right way, overall.
Yeah but Firefox gives you the browser vanilla with the_OPTION_to add extra features.
Uh? I use Opera as a webbrowser, I couldn’t care less that it also integrates email/torrent, if memory serves those functionalities cost me the grand total of two clicks to disable them (and a little HDD space)..
People don’t use Opera because their marketing|advertising suck, that’s all.
I plan to switch to Chrome once I’ve stress-tested it a little more because I care about open source (but not enough to keep using FF as I found it too unreliable), their page zoom isn’t as good as Opera’s one though (not sure if it is a deal breaker, I don’t use it that often).
Uh? I use Opera as a webbrowser, I couldn’t care less that it also integrates email/torrent, if memory serves those functionalities cost me the grand total of two clicks to disable them (and a little HDD space)..
I’ve been trying to find where to disable them but I can’t seem to find any way for that O_o
People don’t use Opera because their marketing|advertising suck, that’s all.
I have tried Opera quite a few times just to see if it’s worth the praise the fans give it, but I’ve always ended up using other browsers. Opera feels too bloated for my taste. I want a browser, not a swiss army knife of various tools.
Anyway, I just downloaded Opera 9.5 and it seems somewhat better than the previous releases. Compared to Chrome it’s a tad faster on my machine and scrolling pages feels a whole lot more comfortable. For some reason Chrome skips quite badly when scrolling. Chrome on the other hand has less bloated interface (and I absolutely love the fact that it doesn’t have menu!!), it looks better and the starting page is IMHO A LOT better than in Opera. I do definitely like it that my bookmarks are there visible, and that it handles updating itself automatically without me having to keep it in order. Opera may have invented the original idea, but Google made it better.
Sorry for this, but: LOL?!
The Opera download is smaller than Firefox: 5 MB Opera as opposed to 7 MB Firefox. Their memory and CPU usage is similar. The mail client is 1 (ONE!111!one!!1) entry in a submenu. The RSS client is not in sight too. The Bittorrent client is pretty decent, and easy to disable.
Stop spreading FUD please. Firefox user here
Edited 2008-09-04 14:16 UTC
It’s called competition. If opera wants to stay in the browser market then it needs to improve its browser to compete with Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft.
and let’s not forget Apple [the main contributor to the webkit/khtml engine that Chrome is based off of] ….
Let’s not forget the KDE team. They created the KHTML engine which was transformed by Apple into WebKit.
which is why I said “main contributor” …
Which is still wrong: the originator of a project is also a contributor.
I’d say the “main contributor”s were the KHTML dev team members, since probably that’s still the largest part of the code base (I’m not sure, I didn’t take a look, but I presume). Anyway, credit was given, so whatever, important is that it’s based on a good rendering engine which hopefully will only get better.
Heh… witty, but I wonder if you tried Konqueror in the years before Apple got their finger out and started contributing code back to KHTML? Granted, I never used it full-time, but when I did use it I found no cause for complaint with the rendering abilities. I’d say it was faster and less prone to leakage over time than Firefox, without a doubt, and my layouts never needed tweaking for any bugs. If the surrounding interface hadn’t been left for dead by Firefox’s I’d probably be using it now.
Apple have helped it along a lot, no argument, but to suggest that they are responsible for the bulk of its current quality seems like the effects of a Reality Distortion Field(TM)…
I agree – KHTML worked really well before Apple got its hands on it, and even with Apple’s influence it still just works really well. Did Apple actually do anything except introduce security flaws and get it working with their Safari code?
Look in the credits for Konqueror. Most names there are from KDE. The “Apple Safari Developers” are credited as just that, not “Webkit Developers”.
As for the license, a lot of EULAs are copied and pasted. My mother’s iPod came with the Mac OS X EULA prohibiting her from using iTunes with our Windows computer. It’s no excuse for copying, especially since one inappropriate clause in a EULA can leave your company open to litigation.
Improve it?? As Thom said, Opera is major overkill for a browser. Hell, it’s got more than SeaMonkey, and that’s an entire suite of software!
Granted, Chrome does seem to be heavily influenced by Opera, but I also see hints of Firefox, NetPositive and Safari in there too. Should Mozilla, Access/Palm and Apple claim infringement along with Opera and go after Google? Personally, I don’t think so; innovation starts with taking someone else’s good ideas and making them better. I would hope that Opera, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple see this as a challenge to improve their own products, both for their own profits and for the benefit of the users as well.
That’s what’s so confusing and frustrating.
It seems Opera really doesn’t get the credit they deserve.
The Register article that poundsmack linked to, for example. People are raving about features in Chrome that have been in Opera for years.
Opera has features X, Y, and Z and it’s no big deal. But Google releases a browser with X, Y, and Z, or Firefox adds X, Y, and Z and suddenly those are the best features ever.
I guess I’m just whining, but it really seems like Opera gets the short end of the stick.
You are correct – but that’s how it goes. Opera lost out because it cost to get the browser, and I suspect that people have reacted to that in a very negative way. And people hold grudges. Generally for a long time. Plus, we have the FireFox fanatics (pity I can’t trademark that) who just mod down anyone who dares bash FireFox or criticise it. If I hadn’t already posted, you’d have gotten a mod point from me.
I still think osnews really needs to start moderating mod points and removing the ability for users to mod if they abuse it on a regular basis.
Dave
Chrome took some simple ideas(and developed them futher) from Internet Explorer 8 as well.
I think the generel idea is that they only wanted to credit open source software. It’s poitical.
Notice that they mentioned WebKit, not Safari.
This really is “So what if a car goes faster…Bicycle has had wheels for decades!” type of argument.
Opera seems to be doing OK in the embedded browser space. If Opera wants to stay in the desktop browser market, it needs to get some better marketing. Opera 9.5 is in every way a fine browser and could easily compete with all the others. The problem is that most people have barely heard of it and even those who have don’t know of any compelling reason to try it.
How about this wonderful issue – fix the damn incompatibility issues with Google services; Blogspot for example, the copy and paste into the rich text box doesn’t work properly, uploading to YouTube is unreliable and on occasions just doesn’t work.
Then there is Photobucket, again, the uploader doesn’t work properly – then there are numerous incompatibilities and basically the half assed port on operating systems other than Windows.
So please, tell me, why does ‘Opera’ deserve marketshare when it can’t even get the most basic of things correct – namely, rendering large mainstream sites correctly. I wouldn’t care if this was some nameless website in the whop-whops, but we’re talking about big name mainstream websites.
Is it perhaps because Opera is too standards compliant? Quite a few mainstream sites “break the rules” because the most common renderers are broken and the designer’s target is to make sure it renders well on the common browsers. Opera, despite having an good track record of standards compliance, has too little share out there to be considered worth the effort to get it to render in Opera properly.
Well, that’s what I think anyway.
Bitter much?
Good thing Opera is completely made out of original ideas, eh?
I’ve long noticed an inverse relationship between the market share of a product and the… err… enthusiasm of its fans.
even though he thinks that imitation is flattery, this browser will take what market share opera would have rightfully deserved by having the same if not better feature set and push opera further away from general public knowledge.
Having all the possible features does not a browser better than another one. it’s HOW those features are implemented. And as for the “rightfully deserved market share”..well, I can just say that I don’t like Opera. It’s ugly and feels pretty bloated. But I immediately liked Chrome. If what you said was true then I would have used Opera before.
Gotta agree with most other people, Opera tries to be all things to all people. I’m not saying thats a bad thing but I for one don’t really like Opera.
I did take a look at Chrome and I really didn’t like it either but if I only had the two to pick from I would go with Chrome over Opera.
Basically what’s being said here is that Opera has some serious usability issues that really turn a lot of people off. And instead of fixing these issues so that more people would want to use it, Opera is more content with crying to the EU and blaming their lack of marketshare on Microsoft.
Personally, I use it because of its rad text-to-speech, but that is the ONLY reason. Trying to move my profile to a separate partition is an exercise in ini hell. Even after tweaking the hell out of opera6.ini, I’ve got half the files where I want them and the other half still in my user profile folder. I finally just gave up.
Same with trying to configure for single user in Vista (to try and make the above just a little easier). Following the instructions, I got an error every time I start the browser that the mail engine couldn’t initiate because Opera apparently doesn’t know what UAC is. (The only program so far that has given me any trouble with UAC.) Apparently, you have to download the ‘classic’ installer to make this work in Vista or run as Administrator… I dunno, it’s just one big clusterf**k.
Seriously, if I wanted to spend an endless amount of time hacking config files and pulling my hair out, I’d just install Linux
I really, really hate this browser.
The EULA is only one part of the story.
Another one is that the Browser shares everything you type into the address bar with Google servers.
And then there are these severe security problems, too.
Google has to fix up those, too.
I strongly agree with you. Combine an outdated insecure base and throw an oddball UI and spying technology (sending everything you type in the address bar to google with your IP address) on top and you get Google Chrome – a browser I will never touch as it is right now. If someone forks it and puts an newer webkit and replaces the omnibar with a traditional address bar that doesn’t spy on you, I may give it a try.
Is the data very different than using Google search, or the search field in Firefox eg. “Search suggestions”
A scary thought is the excuse for this EULA.
From the second quote,
Which products is she talking about? Which products should I not be using?
Should I stop using gmail?
Google Code.
Paranoid Me thinks this kind of stuff are not mere accidents, but deliberated actions to get us slowly but steadily “comfortable” with the idea that *nothing* really belongs to us, not our paid-for music, not our surfing habits, not our medical records, not a thing…
I’d be happy for Google to take ownership of paying my bills.
If you use this browser they probably *should* be responsible for your ISP bill. They’re getting more use out of the service than you are.
Agreed. Totally agreed. Don’t ask me how or why you got modded down, since you weren’t being a troll, and you were pretty much on the ball, so you get a +1 from me 🙂
Dave
I thought Google just got free advertising.
There is no reason to switch. What does Chrome offer that can’t be had in other much more mature packages? There is no real nagging “void” that chrome fills. And you know why? Because Chrome isn’t very innovative or original. Sure, borrow the hell out of other ideas, its how true innovation works “we see so far because we stand on the shoulders of giants”…but you have add something as well. According to future plans when they’ve added what they want to you’ll have even MORE of a clone of other browsers. Oh well.
As for Opera being bloated, thats a new one to me unless of course there is a new definition of bloated which means: feature rich, compact and effecient.
All joking aside, once you’ve added enouogh third party extensions to firefox to match operas functionality (including an e-mail client) you have a FAR greater resource footprint. Comparisons of vanilla installations would show you they are practically the same, of course, thats not an apples to apples comparison…
Products does not have to be innovative or original o be successful.
I swear, it’s like people here has never heard of marketing and brand recognition.
Draconian EULAs don’t write themselves. Woopsiedoopsie my ass.
My guess is it was a case of “cut and paste” slip up.
The snagged a large chunk from their Google docs or whatever that service is…
…Well at least that is what I have been suggesting to all my co-workers/acquaintances who were panicking over the EULA wording. It did say “SERVICES”, not application or product and services generally refer to google server-specific offerings, not something like a browser.
Yeah… EULA and “Open Source”/Free Software… an interesting mix… I wonder what Stallman thinks…
I’m gonna play a fifty-fifty here and say I reckon he doesn’t like it
I don’t know about US law, but in all European countries (that includes the Netherlands
) it is impossible to unilaterally and retroactivly change an existing license agreement. The other party has to agree to the change and while I don’t see a reason to not agree it is not as simple as Mrs. Ward’s statement implies.
Thus, to be on the safe side, a user of Google’s Chrome browser should re-install the software with the new EULA.
BTW, any word on the hopefully free and open source license Google’s going to use for Chrome?
Due to work related things i had to watch the whole Chrome release from my iPhone.
I am now in work and have used the browser for a couple of hours and wow
Love the sleek design, i am one of those users where less is certainly more.
Very very fast, i am going through web sites like there is no tommorow.
I am a mac user at home but in two minds if this will replace safari. I didn’t like safari on windows as the UI was badly done and it just didn’t seem to work. However i run the latest webkits on my macs. I do love safari on the mac although the one thing that is always a pain is when a flash applet slows everything down and then crashes safari, losing my 10/20 tabs, very annoying.
Ill be interested to see how Chrome fits in with Mac OSX.
Reading back this post it must make me sound very superficial. I did read through the web comic and a lot of the ideas and designs of Chrome are very impressive, there has already been many benchmarks already regarding speed etc, so the only comment i can make is really on the UI.
The EULA doesn’t have much legal weigh anyway. It’s just here to spread fear in the mind of the users, but I don’t think it has been used in court anywhere in the world. Where I live at least, clicking yes on a computer does not equal to signing a contract. Moreover, where I live there are laws protecting my privacy and I can ask Google to delete all the data related to me they have when I want and Google will delete it if it wants to continue doing business here. The EULA certainly doesn’t supercede the law and I doubt it has any legal value at all.
Where would that be?
“Chrome is a security nightmare, indexes your bank accounts”
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39176/108/
Wow,it indexes your information and only lets you see it. Surely a showstopper…or not.
Extremely hard to remove for ordinary user, not to mention it has scheduled task to Reinstall itself???
Read fine print EULA before installing Chrome. Everything is recorded on google server which passes through chrome.
Yesterday Morning I received the news that google was releasing a browser – I felt excited. I read the web comic and learnt about the design approach to the browser – I felt thrilled. I read the comments on this board and I feel dismayed, alarmed and stunned. This is one of the best things to happen in a long time because the code is freely available. All the problems any of us have with it can be addressed in an alternative version of the browser or our favourite distro could just repackage a sanitzied version of the browser.
Let me just say this. The issue with privacy boils down to how much control you have over it. I think we are reacting a bit overmuch over some of the privacy issues and the issues of data being sent to and from the google servers. I grant that google owning your data in the initial Eula was ridiculous, that has been changed but we still have control. Savour it, appreciate because its more than what you will get from Opera, Microsoft or Apple.
Antwarrior out.
I think the best way to approach this silly lawyer-ese stuff is simply to ignore it. I ignore EULAs, licenses and the like all the time. If the bits are in the wild, you just lost control. Anything more than that is a fantasy. Conversely, not compiling your own software that is secure and privacy respecting , you must assume that anything you do with someone else’s software looks at everything you do and calls home. Any less of an assumption is dangerous these days .