In a Google Terms of Service update for Google Workspace that I received today it says this:
- Section 9, Publicity: We clarified that neither Google nor you may issue a press release or other similar public statement regarding your use of the services without the other party’s permission
What on earth does that mean?
You can’t issue a press release about your use of the service without their permission.
It says, “or other similar public statement” - which might mean anything, including posting here.
I’ve never seen anything like that before. Why can’t we talk freely about how we feel about the service anywhere we want?
Because Google doesn’t want you to?
Yeah, but… seriously. Can they do that? Have you ever heard of such a thing?
Do you do what Google wants you to do?
Sometimes, when companies are negotiating contracts with vendors, they may add a provision that forbids the vendor from bragging in their advertising that the other company is a customer. This looks like a preemptive promise along those lines.
If, say, Ford Motor or Chase Bank decides to switch from Office 365 to Google Workspace for email, they don’t necessarily want Google to use their corporate names in Google’s advertising. Or Google may not want anyone to know that they’re the chosen email provider of organizations that may be culturally or politically controversial. There are probably other reasons you can imagine.
From the way it’s written it sounds like we basically can’t discuss our Google Workplace accounts on any social media.
That would mean, as a result of your launching this thread, you should watch your (e)mail for a notice from Google Legal…
Exactly. Weird, don’t you think?
Well, don’t take this the wrong way but I think it’s your interpretation of the legal boilerplate that is weird.
How else may it be interpreted?
I’m guessing it’s for the same reason you probably don’t want Google to use you or your details in a press release, advertisement, data dump etc showcasing Google Workspace without your permission.
Also as Incompatible writes above.
It seems off somehow. I have privacy rights as a customer. Google doesn’t have privacy rights to stop people from talking about the quality of the service in general, their experiences using the system, giving it ratings and reviews and so on.
It sounds like they are trying to give themselves such property rights.
It’s just different.
One thought is that they had a overly enthusiastic lawyer go overboard when updating the terms of service.
I’ve just never seen anything like that before.
I’ll just note that this clearly unenforceable in the US as a massive violation of the First Amendment.
Maybe. Non-disclosure agreements are commonplace. You can sign away your right to talk about something.
Whether or not that can be part of the terms of service for using a product is beyond my armchair-lawyer skill set.
Which are almost entirely in the context of employment. That doesn’t apply here.
The first amendment applies to governments, not private companies. Making non disclosure a condition of use seem shady, but possibly not impermissible.
Fair enough, but it’s not that simple. The complexity is with enforcement If @douglerner issues a press release about his use of Google, and Google boots him off their platform as a result, it doesn’t implicate the 1st amendment. But if they sued in court or asked the police to arrest him, then the government is involved and it does become a 1st amendment violation.*
(In any case, I should have just said “massive free speech violation”)
*although I think Doug lives in Japan, so it might something entirely different.
Nondisclosure agreements are being widely abused these days. A nonprofit professional association that I belong to required unpaid volunteers on a committee to sign a nondisclosure agreement I found completely out of line and last year removed me from the committee after I refused. This year there was a turnover of officers and the new crew has now tossed the nondisclosure agreements except for a few limited cases. I recognize that employees are in a different category, but companies have no business imposing nondisclosure on customers.