The Google Chrome Copyright Conspiracy

Is Google's new Internet browser Chrome too good to be true? With its light yet powerful interface, security that rivals Firefox, and one of the Internet's largest names backing it up, many are concerned that an evil force lies behind this shiny package.

That evil force? More unwanted advertising. Google is, after all, one of the largest advertising companies on the Internet, so are we supposed to expect that their new web browser doesn't exist purely to collect user data from unsuspecting surfers?

When I opened Chrome for the first time, I expected to see ads somehow incorporated into the browser, but instead, I found a clean browser that blocked the first pop-up I ran into. That says a lot coming from a browser devised by a company who makes most of their money from advertising.

As it turns out, people should be less worried about intrusive ads, and more concerned with copyright protection.

When Chrome was first unveiled to the public on September 3^rd, thousand of eager users downloaded the software in order to be the first to test out what might be the best Internet browser to date. In doing so, they had to agree to Google's terms and services. I mean, how many people sit down to read all of that legal jargon anyway?

If they had, they would have seen a clause in their End User License Agreement, or EULA, that resembled something that could have been written by the Borg Collective.

By agreeing to Google Chrome's EULA users were granting Google, "...perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly, perform, publicly display and distribute..." anything that the user types, creates, posts, publishes or displays on or through Chrome's browser.

Um, Yikes?

Copyright lawyers began swarming around Google thanks to such an outrageous error of judgment on Google's part. I mean, Google will eventually take over the world and thumb their collective noses at Microsoft one the same day Taco Bell becomes Google Bell, but this moved seemed insane.