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The next claims is also misleading: "It should be illegal to put any "terms of service" on a physical product." As you said, the issue is not that Google claim

The next claims is also misleading: "It should be illegal to put any "terms of service" on a physical product." As you said, the issue is not that Google claimed some sort of ongoing right to block resale of the phone in the ToS, but simply that it refused to sell the phone to resellers to begin with. That's not attaching a ToS to a physical product, but just choosing who to take orders from.

whatshisface 4y ago
Companies should not be running an internal justice department to sanction, through unrelated business wings, individuals who they have a dispute with, at most they should stop holding up their end of that contract while taking their grievance to the real courts. The only case in which that wouldn't be an option is the one where the resellers breached neither a contract nor a law in which case... why does Google think it can act against them?
kelnos 4y ago
From the article: > Such an arrangement is against Google’s terms of service, which state that customers “may only purchase Devices for your personal use [and] may not commercially resell any Device” While you could certainly argue that's a ToS for the use of the store (not for the product itself), it's up to Google to identify resellers and not sell to them. If they fail to identify a customer as a reseller -- or hell, someone buys the phone and only later on decides to commercially resell it, or to sell it to a commercial reseller -- tough luck. That's just the first-sale doctrine at work. Google taking punitive action against people who get away with this may not literally be "enforcing terms of service on a physical product", but it's muddy enough that I don't think the distinction matters. (Regardless, I think it's a big stretch to connect the ToS for store purchases to an entire Google account.) In any case, it's an incredibly scummy thing to do.

whatshisface 4y ago

Companies should not be running an internal justice department to sanction, through unrelated business wings, individuals who they have a dispute with, at most they should stop holding up their end of that contract while taking their grievance to the real courts. The only case in which that wouldn't be an option is the one where the resellers breached neither a contract nor a law in which case... why does Google think it can act against them?

kelnos 4y ago

From the article: > Such an arrangement is against Google’s terms of service, which state that customers “may only purchase Devices for your personal use [and] may not commercially resell any Device” While you could certainly argue that's a ToS for the use of the store (not for the product itself), it's up to Google to identify resellers and not sell to them. If they fail to identify a customer as a reseller -- or hell, someone buys the phone and only later on decides to commercially resell it, or to sell it to a commercial reseller -- tough luck. That's just the first-sale doctrine at work. Google taking punitive action against people who get away with this may not literally be "enforcing terms of service on a physical product", but it's muddy enough that I don't think the distinction matters. (Regardless, I think it's a big stretch to connect the ToS for store purchases to an entire Google account.) In any case, it's an incredibly scummy thing to do.