Today I closed the old ‘binnsy’ Google account and signed up for a new one. The old one was so overridden with spam, both in Blogger and Gmail, that it was hardly worth keeping. Being bored, I had a brief flick through the T&C, and found this little tidbit of legalese goodness:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence 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 licence 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.

Ooh, er, guv’nor!

So basically, post what you want, you own it, all good – but if Google wants it, they’ll damn well take it! Google has this appearance of being an organic, innovative, progressive ‘community’ (as opposed to overlording corporation), but this is the way they will take over the world. The planet Earth will very soon be designated, for real, ‘Google Earth.’ We will all be known by our Google IDs. TV commercials, billboards, the lot, will be governed by AdSense.

Essentially, the world and all kinds of freedom will be nommed by the Goog.

Best start stocking up on canned goods. That’s gonna be a looooong winter.

Until next time…