Google to pay USD9 million to settle the Buzz privacy suit
Posted on 03. Sep, 2010 by Allen Smith in Buzz
Facing privacy complaints in its social networking feature, Buzz, Google has now tweaked the social networking tool to make the privacy more transparent.
A class-action suit was filed against Google regarding the privacy policy of the Buzz. The concerns that aired in the technology blogosphere and elsewhere were that the Google Buzz was extracting the private Gmail contacts of the users and adding them to the public Buzz social network, which is against privacy settings of user/s.
Google has not only agreed to pay about $9 million but also tweaked the privacy settings; the GMail users will have to create their respective Google Buzz public profiles, and they can view, edit, even hide the lists of contacts and can go advanced and block anyone they choose within their online circle.
Google made the changes to the user interface of its social networking tool Google Buzz that clarifies the users’ options with regards to the public profile at the Buzz.
Lawyers who filed suit staked 30% of settlement money, and the plaintiffs to get not greater than $2500 each. Remaining money that the Google were to deposit in the fund had been earmarked for all those organizations that devoted to the internet privacy policies and/or education.
Google Buzz has been a tool for the Gmail users to stay connected with online buddies by gettting updates among friends’ circles, sharing videos, photos and links.
This will be interesting to see how this all works out. Google wants to be in the social media realm so bad but continually screw it up, hence Google Wave, Google Profiles, etc.