Following up on yesterday’s article regarding Google Chrome, a couple of brief pieces of news have broken.
First, it appears that Google’s EULA (End User License Agreement) for Chrome was more permissive than perhaps even legally enforceable. Google was quick to issue a retraction, stating that the EULA was copied from another application and would be retroactively corrected. What caught people’s attention? Google was claiming eternal copyright over everything that was displayed on Chrome.
I think that would be a little frightening. Check out the Ars Technica article here.
Second, and one that certainly ranks higher on the meter-o-creepy, is the one that everyone suspected all along – there is no free ride. Ina Fried over at cnet’s Beyond Binary, got word from Google that they’re keeping about 2% of the information generated by the Omnibar, including an IP address so that you can potentially be identifiable. The EFF didn’t like this to terribly much, but feels that Incognito is a step in the right direction.
Looks like my assertion that Incognito is really only there to hide from the Omnibar was a little more true than I had intended.
[T]hese privacy features simply mean that porn and similar sites won’t show up in your Omnibar / Awesome Bar / Smart Address bar. These built in privacy features aren’t so much about privacy as they are about protecting you from accidentally exposing something you might otherwise be ashamed of should your significant other happen to open a new tab.
And finally an oldie, but a goodie.
Epic 2015.
Epic 2014, for which this video is an update, was released around the time of the last political election and gave me (as I was in the process of getting my journalism degree at the time) a generally creepy feeling about the future of journalism. With the advent of Chrome, and thus that much more ground gained into the connected, global mind, I think we need ourselves an Epic 2018.
Update
Google has amended their EULA for Chrome. The offending section, 11, now reads:
11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
Read the blog post about it here.
Related posts:
- Why Do I Love Google News? Because they apparently really love me too. A few months...
Bradley Robb likes TV and books, and has an intense dislike for cinnamon. Once, Bradley stopped a Soviet T-60 with his middle finger. Bradley writes speculative fiction and edits Fiction Matters, and never really got the hang of talking about himself in the third person.