Google+’s Photo Terms of Service (a.k.a. Picasa Web Albums) – better than Flickr not as good as Mobypicture
I’m something of a Terms of Service nazi when it comes to terms of service for online photo gallery systems (see my Why I Won’t Use Flickr warning). With folk getting very friendly with Google+ I figured should best glance over their terms.
In very short they’re better than Facebook or Flickr but not as good as Mobypicture and Imgur. In simple terms when you upload a photo to Google+ / Picasa Web Albums you grant them the rights to use and adapt that image for display in any of Google’s services and for use in “promoting Google’s services”. What’s nice about this vs Flickr, for example, is that the “worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license” in this case is specifically limited to within Google’s services rather than including “partners”.
Additionally, unlike Facebook, when you delete photos from Google+ / Picasa Web the licence you’d granted to Google will become revoked “within a commercially reasonable period” (i.e. giving Google a chance to catch up with removing content they may have used for promotion purposes).
A very nice touch is the “Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed” wording. So the terms of service are pretty reasonable. As always exercise caution with any content you feel particularly clingy about the rights of and always backup your photos elsewhere but as far as social photo sharing goes Google+ is totally acceptable. Now nip over to Facebook and grab your photos and content here and choose “Download your information” for happy transitioning to Google+.
But don’t take my word for it read the Term of Service for yourself here.