Google Chrome: EULA Backpeddles, Additional Vulnerabilities, O/S Alternatives And More Giggles

Following up on yesterday’s coverage, Google’s now claiming that the egregious wording in the end user license agreement for its new Chrome browser was ‘all a big mistake’ and that the company 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.

Right. The browser’s been in development for two years, and the company still did an inadvertent last-minute copy-and-paste rush job on the EULA for it. Ahem. More likely, the uproar caused Google to backtrack on its original plans…thank goodness for the intensive analysis and information proliferation capabilities of the ‘Net. With that said, Section 11 of the EULA has now been amended from:

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.

to

You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

In other Chrome news, Microsoft employee Robert Hensing reports that the current version of the browser has two security flaws, not one as I previously reported, along with the inherent potential for additional circumventions. See his post for the detailed kernel process analysis data and deductions.

Type about:internets into the browser to get some amusing animated results:

Here are some more serious ‘about:’ options.

Lifehacker reports that it’s possible to run currently-Windows-only Chrome on Linux via Wine (and therefore, presumably, on OS X via Darwine).

Google’s Sergey Brin indicates that Android will ‘probably’ incorporate Chrome ’soon’, thereby confirming what I’d already forecasted.

Here’s an interesting Chrome-vs-IE8 comparison-and-contrast.

And finally, back to the silliness, here are some more parodies of Google’s comic strip introducing Chrome. These are definitely NSFW (and easily offended folks should more generally stay away).