Chrome: Giving Your Rights Away to Google

As a writer, I will not be using the new browser - Chrome - from Google. The problem has nothing to do with its capabilities, its security, or its provenance. The problem is the end-user license agreement you must agree to when you install it. Clause 11.1 of the Chrome EULA says:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that 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 licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence 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.

Effectively, this means that for any material you "submit, post or display" via the browser (this post, for example) Google gets the right, for free and forever, to use it in any way they want.

No. I don't think so, Google. You want my stuff, you pay me for it.

Presumably, if Google ever exercised this right, you could challenge it in court if you felt you had grounds that it wasn't being used "for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote" its browser. But why would you take the risk when you can be absolutely sure of keeping all your intellectual property rights by not using Chrome at all?

I know Google isn't the sweet little bunch of struggling upstarts it once was but this is real Evil Empire stuff. Maybe the PR department should take a stand and rein in the company's lawyers before Google loses all its friends.