Google’s terms of service prohibit underage users
According to a 28 March 2008 CNET article called Google: No kids allowed, Google’s user agreements seemed to prohibit anyone under 18 from using Google.
The most recent version of Google’s Terms of Service was published on 16 April 2007 and state that users must be “of legal age to form a binding contract with Google”. As CNET correspondent Chris Soghoian points out, legal age in the USA is 18 years and older.
Does this mean that underage users are violating Google’s policies? Perhaps – but it depends on whether Google is enforcing its own policies in a consistent manner.
Under the recent versions of their user agreements, both Facebook (28 August 2009) and MySpace (25 June 2009) require users to be at least 13 years old. See the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and the MySpace Terms of Service page for the details.
Image courtesy of jessamyn on Flickr via a Creative Commons license.
Leave a Reply