Google is forbidding users from reselling or loaning Glass eyewear

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Devices on Google Play Terms of Sale

But also:

Governing Law and Jurisdiction

The courts in some countries will not apply California law to consumers in those countries, or some types of terms and disputes. If you reside in one of those countries, then where California law is excluded from applying, your country's laws will apply to these terms and any disputes related to them terms

Also, does use of the word 'commercially' in the resale clause also cover private sales?

Graham

[Laridae]

I can see Google rightfully controlling who uses a beta version of a product.
It's a little like a non-disclosure agreement that you have to sign to even hear about a new product or idea sometimes. It's a special case and they presumably would not try to enforce these conditions once the product is widely released commercially.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by tompe

I do not see any similarity to Apple fans. You have a program that is designed to develop applications and a lot of people wanted to be able to do that. A person lying about developing applications should not have been allowed to participate so to me it seems totally reasonable that this should not be a lottery were you make money by re-selling.

Are you sure that this is a program that is designed to develop applications? Glass Terms of Sale:

You may only use your consumer Google account on Glass, unless otherwise authorized by Google.

Originally Posted by Graham

But also:

I don't know what point you are trying to make.

Originally Posted by Graham

Also, does use of the word 'commercially' in the resale clause also cover private sales?

The only definition that I could find was related to art, as the only other search results got me back to quotes of Google's ToS:

A commercial resale is a sale:
a. for money (not a gift or donation or exchange for goods or services);
b. which is not the first transfer of ownership (for example, the first transfer might be the original sale by the artist to the first purchaser or the artist's gift of his or her work to a friend or relative or the acquisition of an artwork through inheritance from the artist's estate); and
c. which involves an art market professional.

[calvin-c]

One thing I don't think anybody's pointed out is that he was reportedly offered up to $90,000 for it. That's serious money-so serious in fact that I suspect there was a business purpose behind it. What business purpose could be served by getting one of these early models? I doubt if it would be anything good for Google.

I've seen a lot of this sort of stuff. People get freebies because they're special somehow-possibly just convention attendees, sometimes noted developers or reviewers. And then they sell their 'gifts'. Part of their argument is that it's a known practice & the company giving out the stuff doesn't care. Obviously Google does.

The other part is that it was given to them so they're free to do what they want with it. What's ignored is that it was given for a purpose. A classic case of that is betrothal, breach of promise suits. Several courts have ruled that if a gift is given in anticipation of a promised result and the promised result isn't met then the gift must be returned.

This isn't entirely parallel since the device was bought (which is the first time, BTW, that I've heard of people paying to participate in a beta test). But it's similar.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

One thing I don't think anybody's pointed out is that he was reportedly offered up to $90,000 for it. That's serious money-so serious in fact that I suspect there was a business purpose behind it. What business purpose could be served by getting one of these early models? I doubt if it would be anything good for Google.

It was pointed out in post #4.

I quoted the explanation in post #41:

Marketplace quotes Kevin Dietz, a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who confessed he had gone to an online group for Glass Explorers and featured a link to Ed's auction. The idea, it seems, was to artificially raise the price to such a degree that the auction would become meaningless.

"The reason why I posted it in the first place was to prevent the auction from completing. The whole idea of being a part of the Explorer program is not about getting Google Glass or turning a profit. It's about being on the cutting edge, and this person clearly doesn't care about that," he said.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

I don't know what point you are trying to make.

Sorry. That regardless of what is in the ToS earlier, Google allows that local laws regarding resale take precedence.

Whether or not this is legal, there's certainly a lot of reselling going on openly. There are 134 up for sale on eBay UK at the moment.

Graham

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Graham

Sorry. That regardless of what is in the ToS earlier, Google allows that local laws regarding resale take precedence.

Whether or not this is legal, there's certainly a lot of reselling going on openly. There are 134 up for sale on eBay UK at the moment.

134 what?

[johnnyb]

In addition to what has been said about "control over the beta test:"
I think it makes sense for Google to want their beta testers to stay the way they have been previously selected according to the test’s requirements.
Whether that should lead to banning is another matter.
And especially since Amazon, in whose Kindle platform I am invested, might do it, too, but I think that really also depends on the prospective earnings they could make off of you. If I bought one ninety-nine cent book in 2007 and had since been buying books, stripping them, returning and loading to my Kindle, I could imagine them banning me (especially if I didn't order anything else from them). If I did that with every one in ten books I bought (or maybe returned one in five books just because I wasn't interested) and bought some other stuff as well, they might not care at all...
Likewise, if one of the well known tech journalists decided to sell his Glasses now, Google might probably still benefit more by not closing his account than doing... same goes for when the Glasses are finally mass-market... If I were using a couple of Google services, buying the occasional app in their app store, my account is much more valuable to them open than closed, even if I'm not a heavy spender...

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

134 what?

LOL. I'm not having a good day.

It was 134 Nexus 4s which was the example device I was taking a look at to see what was being resold.

Graham

[Rylon]

Originally Posted by Graham

Sorry. That regardless of what is in the ToS earlier, Google allows that local laws regarding resale take precedence.

That's axiomatic though. Google doesn't really need to acknowledge that some countries they do business in won't follow California law and their laws might prohibit some of the ToS. The laws of that country apply in that country and any statement to the country is meaningless.

The purpose of designating California law is so that countries or states that will apply it if designated in a contract do, in fact, apply it. Countries that don't recognize that sort of thing, well there's nothing you can do about that.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Graham

LOL. I'm not having a good day.

It was 134 Nexus 4s which was the example device I was taking a look at to see what was being resold.

Graham

I was thinking that the number that you gave was too small to be about all Google devices (in general) and too big to be about the Google Glasses.

The way I look at it, companies don't enforce everything in their ToS. They just reserve the right to do things. But the fact is that the general ToS for devices do state that they are not made to be commercially resold.

In a way, the terms for the Glasses are both less and more restrictive (and these are the ones that apply since they are device-specific), since they allow for device to be resold (with Google's authorization) but they don't allow sharing.

It is possible that this is truly a device for personal use. As I understand it is voice activated. If there is a significant chance that the device crashes by itself when used by someone else other than the owner, the ToS can be Google's way of saying 'it was meant to do that'.