Yesterday’s flare-up about the Terms of Service for Google’s new browser Chrome, followed by the company’s rapid backtracking on the demands it was making of users, left many people wondering about Google ToS in general.

Is it OK for service providers to require that they be exempt from the copyright norm of no re-use without explicit permission? We don’t think it is.

Chrome’s original ToS made far-reaching claims to rights for promotional re-use and sharing with partner companies of any data sent through the Google browser. When users cried foul, the company apologized and said that this standard condition for all Google services wasn’t appropriate for a browser. It’s not uncommon for services online to make such demands–but we argue that there’s a better way for this to be done.

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