Google Chrome, the new kid on the block in the web-browser market, has been making headlines all over the Internet… and not always for the most noble of reasons.

While Chrome has been praised in some quarters for its revolutionary “multi-threaded” approach to tabbed browsing and its rapid rate of adoption (within 48 hours of its release it was already the #4 web browser in the world), it’s also been the subject of much criticism for the terms of its license, which on the surface appears to violate Google’s long-held “Don’t Be Evil” tenet.

The biggest bone of contention has been this clause, which appears in section 11.1 of Google’s EULA for Chrome:

You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. 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 license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.

To translate from Legalese:  While not derpiving you of your own rights under copyright law, Google assumes its own “ownership” of any content you send to their servers via Chrome (which would include the contents of search queries entered into Chrome’s “Omnibar”) and retains the right to broadcast the fact you just searched for “barnyard animal pr0n” to the world.

Requiescat en Pace, the Concept of Privacy (dawn of human civilization - 2008)?

Well, maybe not just yet.

Yesterday afternoon, Google announced it was eliminating that clause in the Chrome EULA, and making said change retroactive to everyone who downloaded Chrome before this change was made.  As it now stands, section 11.1 of the EULA retains only the first sentence as quoted above; everything from “By submitting, posting or displaying…” on has been deleted.

The original wording, according to Google, was done in an attempt to create a single, common EULA for all of Google’s distributed applications, and in this case appears to be a holdover from Google Docs.  Once word of that clause and its decidedly sinister implications got out to the public, however, Google realized a mistake had been made as far as Chrome was concerned and quickly backtracked.

No matter what can be said about Google for putting such a clause in any of their products, credit must be given to them for at least admitting error in this case.  Here is concrete proof that people do read those EULAs after all, and now there is precedent for a major corporation (which Google is now, make no mistake about it) doing a “take-back” on something their user base openly rebelled against.

Everyone in Redmond, take notes.  This is how you build good relations with your users.

If you liked that, try...

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