Yang, in an interview, said terms of service that may be needed for a Web site to display content may not be appropriate for other applications. Google "goofed" in putting the copyright language in Chrome, and the company is reviewing that copyright language in some of its other products, he said.

"There's no intent on our part to assert any sort of license for all the stuff users push to and from the Internet," Yang said. "[The universal terms of service] is a pretty broad license, but only to the extent that we need it to provide you with the services."

However, the copyright terms that still exist in Picasa, Blogger and other Google applications would allow the company to use its customers' content to promote the Google service. That could allow Google to use the content in live product demonstrations, for example, or in some promotional materials, Yang said.

Asked whether Google could take user content and use it in an advertising campaign without their permission, Yang said internal Google policies would probably prevent the company from doing it. Google wouldn't sell user content without permission, he added.

Andrew Flusche, a Fredericksburg, Virginia, lawyer who focuses on copyright and other issues, questioned how internal Google policy would guarantee protection of the end-users.

"Google's internal policy can change any time; it's their policy," Flusche said. "The only protection users have is what the EULA [end user license agreement] says."

The user agreement could allow Google to "publish a full-color book of Picasa photos as a promotional product," he added.

Google is correct when it says many Web sites have similar copyright provisions, he added. "But that doesn't mean anything," Flusche said. "The terms are still unfavorable to users; that's the dynamic of a huge corporation and millions of end-users."

However, Google would mostly likely be careful with its use of user content to promote its products, given that there's little upside in doing so, said Josh King, vice president for business development at general counsel at Avvo.com, a legal advice site.

"While the rights they've reserved themselves are very broad, it's probably a case of their actual practice being more conservative," King said. "We just have to hope they maintain their stance of not being evil."