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So, are you enjoying the snappy, clean performance of Google Chrome since downloading yesterday? If so, you might want to take a closer peek at the end user license agreement you didn't pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create while using Chrome. Ah-whaaa?

Here are the juicy bits in question:

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. 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.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

Well, I guess I shouldn't have used Chrome to put some posts up yesterday, because I certainly do not have the rights, power or authority to hand over my work from Gawker to the Googe. Oops! You'll have to pry the rights to my posts from Nick Denton's cold, dead hands, Google.

In any case, it's a pretty unnecessary and unreasonable thing to put in the EULA for a browser, of all pieces of software, which makes it pretty questionable. Why in the hell would Google want ownership of every single blog post or email written in its browser? It's so unreasonable that it borders on the insane. I can't really imagine Google actually invoking this and suddenly publishing heavily edited entries from your LiveJournal for profit, but I think a lot of people would feel much better about hopping on board with Chrome if this little piece of sketchy legalese was axed.

Google has responded with haste to the huge outcry about a section in Chrome's EULA that gives Google "a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license" to do all kinds of dirty stuff—in public no less—to content you post through Chrome. Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, told Ars that it's actually an oopsie from basically copying and pasting the same EULA it uses in other products, and that they're updating it as fast as they can to remove the ridiculous terms.

She says that Google is

"working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome."
It's not that I don't trust Google, but the Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V explanation ("this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don't apply well to the use of that product") seems like an odd oversight for a product in secret, heavy development for close to two years. (If you're interested in Chrome, read Steven Levy's deep inside feature about its birth, it's great.)

Either way, whether Google knew it was in there and hoped it would slide—though I can't see a reason for that—or it was an honest mistake, it'll be fixed soon.

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.

That's all done with. I was installing it today and this is what Article 11 says now:

Well at least they fixed it. Now they need to just update the browser a little and I'll use it more. The only thing I use it for now is porn mode looking at Youtube videos of porn.

Fix'd