The Chrome EULA reads like a lot of Google’s other EULAs. It requires users to “give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and nonexclusive 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.”

Originally, the Chrome Terms of Service were very controversial as they could reasonably be interpreted to grant Google a right to use/modify/reproduce any content a user passed through the browser on a royalty-free basis. Google has amended the EULA and the issue has been resolved.

Apparently, some people have misconstrued this to be saying that Google owns everything you pass through Chrome. That’s incorrect. 11.1 clearly states that you keep all your rights to everything passing through Chrome. But, Google does get permission to use anything you do pass through Chrome. The end part of 11.1 limits that permission to the scope of promotional reasons, but then 11.2 and 11.3 extend that (or “clarify,” take your pick) to mean that as long as Google or one of Google’s affiliates use your IP in connection with Chrome, they can do whatever they want.

The worst part is the software guys over at Google saying that it’s no big deal. Well, if it’s no big deal, and they’re not going to enforce it, then why is it in this contract? Take it out, and don’t put it back in. “Do no evil,” remember? I’d like to think that this is just the software guys moving faster than the legal guys and they boilerplate copied/pasted from the other ToS, but Google has an army of lawyers. Someone should have seen this. I can’t stress it enough that I don’t think Google intended for everything passing through Chrome to automagically create a license for Google, but you’d think someone with the resources of Google would have fixed this.

One thing that’s different in the software engineering world from the legal world is that in software engineering, we deal in discretes — anyone can test algorithms and instantly get absolute answers (I was a software engineer before I got into IP law). But in the legal realm, a lot of what goes on is interpretation, argument, and lots of grey areas (and even then, the question is “how grey is that grey?”). So you can call this conspiracy theories or a mistake if you want, but I’d rather think of it as misunderstanding between what we were interpreting and what Google was trying to convey. I wasn’t trying to induce some conspiracy theory or promote any ill will towards Google (I’m a faithful user of google search, gmail, analytics, and adsense), but I wanted the record straight.

Some have argued that one of the basic tenets of contract law is violated by Google’s clarification – a modification of an agreement typically requires additional consideration (consideration in lay terms is generally “something of legal value”, and there are a million caveats to that). To dispose of this issue, it’s important to note how EULAs/ToS are treated in virtually every consumer service business — continued use is sufficient consideration for the modification, because these companies are under no obligation to continue giving you service, and you are under no obligation to continue using it.

I think google updated their EULA for chrome, but for some countries has not yet been updated. As a number of IP, consumer protection, and contract laws are much more vigorous (especially in the EU) than their US counterparts, I foresee that this change will filter down through Google’s international legal departments. At the moment, there has yet to be any harm caused by this issue, and Google is busy translating this disambiguation to the 40+ languages in which Google offers services.