Do No Evil? Really?

Google's release of their browser, Chrome, has caused a stir, as all things new and Google usually do. Google amped up the usual hype with an explanatory comic by famed artist Scott McCloud.

But as Ed Champion rightly points out, the interesting thing about Chrome has less to do with what's under the hood than what Google claims they have rights to through the browser. From the Content License section of Chrome's Terms of Service:

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. 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.

Additional coverage of this issue can be found here and here.

Does this really mean Google can do whatever with whatever one generates as content through Chrome? Who knows if this would ever hold up in court, but why wait to find out? While I don't get anything but self-aggrandizement personal satisfaction from writing this blog, I'd like to think that I don't have to sign over some rights to my work for simply using a tool. Do Bic and Mead have a stake in my notebook scribblings? Does Craftsman take a small percentage of our homes for every nail we strike with hammers made by them?

It might be time for this blog, apparently owned by Google, to migrate elsewhere.