I started playing around with the Google Sites which are definitely part of the Google Apps product suite. I suspect most individual non-corporate wiki creators will quickly be turned off by being forced to provide business information like # of employees (with 10 being the minimum example), business phone #, etc.
As I was reading through Google Sites terms and conditions, I noticed that I wouldn’t be allowed to write about the terms and conditions again as part of the agreement (so I am writing now before I even think about signing up):
“Customer agrees not to issue any public announcement regarding the existence or content of this Agreement without Google’s prior written approval.”
I’m not a big fan of reading terms and conditions, but I decided to read through them and have a feeling these will be deal breakers for many of the potential Google Sites corporate customers:
“3.2.2 Disclaimer Regarding Additional Content. Additional Content may be provided by third parties and may be modified or removed by Google at any time, including at the request of those third parties. Third party providers of Additional Content may include financial exchanges and may be delayed as specified by such financial exchanges or Google’s data providers…Customer agrees not to copy, modify, reformat, download, store, reproduce, reprocess or redistribute any data or information from the Additional Content or use any such data or information in a commercial enterprise without obtaining prior written consent. A broker or financial representative should be consulted to verify pricing before executing any trade. Either Google or its third party data or content providers have exclusive proprietary rights in the data and information provided.”
I’m having trouble understanding who the financial exchange partners are and what they have to do with content, especially considering Google Sites don’t include any revenue share.
“Ownership; Restricted Use. Google and its licensors shall own all right, title and interest, including without limitation all Intellectual Property Rights (as defined below) relating to the Service (and any derivative works or enhancements thereof), including but not limited to, all software, technology, information, content, materials, guidelines, and documentation. Customer shall not acquire any right, title, or interest therein, except for the limited use rights expressly set forth in the Agreement. Any rights not expressly granted herein are deemed withheld. “Intellectual Property Rights” means any and all rights existing from time to time under patent law, copyright law, semiconductor chip protection law, moral rights law, trade secret law, trademark law, unfair competition law, publicity rights law, privacy rights law, and any and all other proprietary rights, and any and all applications, renewals, extensions and restorations thereof, now or hereafter in force and effect worldwide.”
Sounds like you won’t own your own content, though this part provides a little hope:
“Google does not own third party content used as part of the Service, including the content of communications appearing on the Service. Title, ownership rights, and Intellectual Property Rights in and to the content accessed through the Service are the property of the applicable content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright or other law.”
Strange. Third party content thus far sounded like Google partner or “financial exchange” partner content, but maybe they mean content from site members or participants. I wish they were more clear because I feel like most corporate customers are going to want to own their own content that the write themselves, and want to be able to move it elsewhere, if desired.
Being essentially a wiki, you’d think the Google Sites terms of service would spend more time discussing copyrights, collective content, creative commons license, user submissions, user contributions, and other content creation activity.
If you have a similar or different read on the Google Sites terms of service, do comment with your thoughts.