We just read this about the Google Chrome EULA.  It seems Google may claim strong rights to everything you create through or with its browser.

I’m not sure the law has really caught up with the Internet yet.  How could Google enforce this?  When would it?  Would courts go along for the ride?  Are browsers and other free products of this kind a type of “public accommodation” or other necessity of life in the 21st century that might remove them from typical User Agreement legal territory?

We’re seeing EULAs and territorial claims like Chrome’s more and more often.  There are lots of companies with strong User Agreements that either give enormous rights to the companies themselves or deny rights to the users or otherwise require or forbid certain behaviors from their users.  I’d guess that most of the most famous companies on the web have some kind of user-connected provision or another that might fall into one of these categories.

What the companies end up doing with these provisions is another matter.  Often they don’t do much to enforce, at least to date.  But it’s hard to tell which is, well, more Orwellian: the fact that these provisions exist, or the fact that the companies’ behaviors are so radically different from the words that they mouth.  It’s like the lawyers are charged with quietly making as much of a land-grab as possible while the companies go about their business without calling on the provisions to take any action.  Law enforcement is finally starting to take notice.  New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram has investigated one company for allegedly failing to live up to its own statements about what user behavior is and isn’t tolerated on its website.

The law has yet to catch up with the web.  We’ll keep watching.  Meanwhile, we’ll keep watching your back.  Out here on the Internet, everybody’s gotta have a personal posse for backup, in case the big boys start to abuse their EULAs.

What’s your browser of choice?

Firefox? Safari? Internet Explorer?

Well, if you’re like some of the Reputation.com crew you utilize multiple browsers to take advantage of new features and fun tech stuff. Today Google has thrown its hat into the browser ring, announcing their new web browser, Chrome.

The new Google browser  is only in Beta at the moment, but as of Tuesday the 2nd of September it will be released in 100 countries. Unlike Google’s all-powerful, all-knowing algorithm, it’s also open-source.

News of the browser came out via comic, and it gives a lot of insight into what Google was thinking and wanted to achieve with a browser built from scratch.

Here’s a quick break down of features:

The browser incorporates a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8.

A team in Denmark built it from scratch and made it open-source so other browsers could include it. V8 was intended to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, given the ubiquity of that important component on the web today. According to the Google comic, they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means, “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” Chrome will have a task manager so you will be able to tell at a glance when web pages or plug-ins use a lot of memory and “plac[e] blame where blame belongs.”

Google Chrome uses special tabs.

Unlike the “traditional” tabs seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.

Google Chrome has auto-completion features.

Google rolls out something they call ’omnibox’, that offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular and more.

Speed Dial for the Web

The default homepage Chrome presents is a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one in the Opera browser. The page displays your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. On the your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs are displayed.

Added Privacy

Chrome has a privacy mode; according to Google you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” Safari offers this as Private Browsing, the latest version of Internet Explorer calls this InPrivate.

App Integration

Web apps are launchable in their own browser window without the address bar or toolbar. Mozilla has been working on a similar project they call Prism that is supposed to do similar things.

Smart Security

Chrome constantly downloads lists of harmful sites to help fight against malware and phishing attempts. Google says that whatever information runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed.

Could Google’s search dominance be bolstered by their innovative smart browser? Stay tuned for all the latest from the Reputation.com Blog.
This could get interesting.