A colleague from my former story arc in Silicon Valley posted a very interesting essay today about the uneasy relationship between product management and risk management, and how it showed up in the Google Chrome launch. Some excellent insights for anyone developing software products from Jeffrey McManus.
The product used the standard Google licensing agreement, which gives Google a non-exclusive license to anything you submit to a Google service. Because they used the same license on the browser, people who didn’t read or understand the legalese came away with the impression that Google owns everything you do using the browser. And “non-exclusive” is key here (it means they can use your data — in a search index, for example — but they don’t “own” it). Still, it freaked some people out and for good reason — the one-size-fits-all nature of a license agreement that’s appropriate for a web site isn’t necessarily going to fit well for a browser product.
In a content ecology where trust is paramount for credibility, this sort of oversight costs you more than customers. It costs you your reputation.
1 comment:
Any time you can quote Warren Zevon in reference to a licensing agreement you are having a good day.
Post a Comment