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Google Hit By Another Buzz Lawsuit
Despite numerous attempts by Google to control the damage caused by its controversial privacy settings in its newly launched social networking tool Buzz, it has again been targeted by a lawsuit yet again.
This time from one Barry Feldman of New York, whose team of lawyers has accused Google off violating Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Federal Wiretap Act and Federal Stored Communications Act.
Google’s Buzz social networking tool, which has been integrated with its Gmail email service, was greeted with heavy criticism after it was found that social networking tool was in serious violation of every possible privacy law in the country.
Buzz, without bothering to take users’ permission, had automatically created ‘follower’ lists using people’s most frequent and recent email recipients. It went a bit further when it started to display private user information including recently emailed users and other sensitive information.
The latest lawsuit, which was filed by the New Yorker at the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, claims that “Google Buzz made private data belonging to Gmail users publicly available without the users’ knowledge or authorization.”
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Google Offers New Buzz Privacy Feature
Search engine giant Google has announced that, come April 5th, the company’s Buzz social networking tool will get a new privacy reset function, which will ask the users to confirm or change their current Buzz privacy settings.
Buzz, which was launched by Google as a Gmail social networking tool, did not receive a warm welcome from Gmail users, who were forced to share their private information with strangers before Google corrected the controversial privacy setting.
The scandal caused by Buzz prompted some US Congress to urge privacy regulators to investigate Buzz and put an end to it.
However, Google soon realising its peril, had come forward and apologised for the blunders committed with Buzz and had promised to keep correcting the enumerable faults in Buzz.
Todd Jackson, the product manager for Buzz, commenting on the new privacy setting, wrote on a blog post that “Shortly after launching Google Buzz, we quickly realised we didn’t get everything right and moved as fast as possible to improve the Buzz experience. Offering everyone who uses our products transparency and control is very important to us.”
Meanwhile, Gmail users who were earlier against the idea of Buzz, have come out and praised Google for making the changes, which will not only help Buzz get the desired user base but also put a stop to any legal action regarding privacy concerns over Buzz.
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Meet Buzzie, Google’s First Buzz Application For Apple iPhone
The first ever third-party application for Google’s new social networking tool, Buzz, has been released on Apple’s popular iTunes App Store and goes by the name of Buzzie; it is designed to offer iPhone and Gmail users a chance to keep up with their Buzz account on the go.
Interestingly, the application allows non-Gmail members to view the Google Buzz conversations happening in their area without having to log into the service. This feature is very helpful to users who want to ‘test the waters’ before signing up for the service.
Buzzie replicates the exact functionality offered by Google Buzz by allowing users to log-in and start following and taking part in conversations happening all over their Gmail network.
The application also uses the GPS functionality offered by iPhone for displaying the Buzz user’s location, which an be categorised as private or public along with the Buzz profile and conversations.
Buzzie is somewhat similar to third party Twitter applications and allows users to view their own Buzz conversations in chronological order from their homepage.
Interestingly, the smartphone application comes with a better user interface and functionality compared to its web counterpart, which was severely criticised for its rather lax privacy settings.
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Buzz Earns Google A Class-Action Lawsuit
Issues surrounding Google’s latest social network tool, Buzz, haven’t apparently settling down, the search company is now facing a class action lawsuit for its alleged privacy invasion after facing the wrath of users over its privacy features.
A Harvard Law School student, named Eva Hibnick, 24, has filed a class action legal suit against Google over the charges of breaching her privacy after it launched Buzz last week.
Hibnick decided to go for filing the lawsuit only after she found herself automatically signed up with the Buzz social networking site. “I feel like they did something wrong. They opted me into this social network and I didn’t want it”, she said.
The lawsuit, which purportedly represents all Gmail users, alleged that the newly launched social network from Google opted in all the Gmail users without asking for their permission, and thereby inadvertently shared their private details with others.
The complaint reportedly cites the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Federal Stored Communications Act, along with California statutory law.
Gary E. Mason, one of her lawyers from the Mason Law Firm LLP, said they weren’t expecting millions of people getting hundreds of dollars each, but commitment from Google that they wouldn’t do it again when they launch a new product.
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Google Faces EPIC Wrath In Buzz Privacy Debacle
After the user backlash suffered by Google after the launch of its new social networking tool Buzz over suspected privacy flaws, the software giant appears to be in serious trouble.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has complained to the US regulators, claiming that Buzz is violating Consumer Protection laws. The complaint comes just a few days after Google amended the privacy flaw.
The US privacy watchdog filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission which said that the Google tool was compromising the privacy of millions of Gmail users who were forced to follow all the people in their contact list.
Commenting on the abuse of privacy by Google Buzz, EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg said in a statement that “This is a significant breach of consumers’ expectations of privacy. Google should not be allowed to push users’ personal information into a social network they never requested.”
Google had introduced the Buzz social networking tool as a part of its Gmail email client last week and the service immediately came under fire from a number of users.
They claimed that Buzz automatically started sharing their email details over the internet without their express permission and created public social circles of friends for users based on their most frequent Gmail contacts.
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Google Says Sorry For Buzz Privacy Snafu
Search engine giant Google has finally acknowledged the fact that its recently unveiled Gmail social networking tool Buzz, was indeed quite faulty and had some privacy issues surrounding it, BBC News has reported.
The news network reported that the company is aware of the many functionality and privacy issues that surround the controversial software tool, which was first cited as a rival to social networking giant Facebook.
Todd Jackson, Buzz Product Manager at Google told BBC that the company was now bent upon fixing the problems that seem to plague the social networking tool. However, he also added that Buzz was still in a testing phase and the company was glad that the problems were pointed out before the actual rollout.
Acknowledging the fact that Google users around the world have revolted against the blatant breach of privacy performed by Google’s Buzz, Jackson told the BBC that people over at Google knew that the users were ‘rightfully upset’ and that the company was ‘very very sorry’.
Commenting on the development of Buzz, Jackson added to the BBC that “We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild.”
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Google Provides With Some Interesting Data On Buzz
It has only been three days since Buzz, Google’s latest venture in the world of social networking, has been launched and already they have started to churn out some interesting figures and push out a range of improvements.
According to Todd Jackson, Product Manager, Gmail and Google Buzz (ed : interesting that Buzz and Gmail are under the same umbrella), tens of millions of people have checked out Buzz – which would place mean that at least 14 percent of Gmail’s user base has access to it.
Worryingly, only a fraction have created posts and comments it seems. Over these 48 hours (Jackson’s post was written yesterday), more than 9 million posts and comments have been generated, that’s a massive 160,000 updates per hour or put it otherwise, 44 per second, which is slightly less impressive. Buzz on Mobile is even worse it seems with Mashable saying that 200 posts per minute or around 3 posts per second have been published.
This means that a substantial number of Gmail users just came to see and left without updating anything and we’re not even accounting for the fraction people who became regular users of the service, thereby skewing the distribution.
But Buzz is still in its infancy and when Google will finally allow the 140 million or so users of Gmail to have access to it, expect the number of updates to increase exponentially, maybe reaching one million updates per hour.
As a comparison, when Michael Jackson died, more than 1.2 million tweets were posted in one hour.
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Google Buzz Could Cause A Major Privacy Issue
A day after its launch, Google Buzz, the Gmail social networking tool offered by the search engine giant, has surrounded itself with controversy as tech analysts across the world are voicing their concerns over huge privacy flaws in the newly rolled out tool.
The privacy issue was first raised by the Silicon Valley Insider, a popular tech blog, which observed that Google Buzz automatically creates a list of all the Gmail contacts that a user most frequently chats with or emails to.
Then Buzz starts ‘following’ the people on the users contact list and makes the list public, easily available on the internet.
This means if somebody wants to find out the people with whom a person is regularly chatting with or mailing to, they can do so with ease, leaving nothing to the imagination.
This particular issue with Google Buzz is being looked upon as a serious privacy intrusion by many users, who were forced to share their email and contact lists with the whole world (as public).
However, upon closer inspection, it was found that Google Buzz only allows those who are Buzz users or have a Google profile, to view the email and chat lists of other Buzz users.
Also Google mercifully grants users the opportunity to ‘unfollow’ those with whom they don’t want to be linked to.
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Meet Buzz, Google’s Social Networking Tool For Gmail
Search engine giant Google has rolled out a brand new tool for its Gmail mail service which will allow users to share photos, web links, videos and status updates, among other features.
With this tool, Google attempts to carve a niche for it self in the lucrative social networking market which is currently dominated by Facebook.
Buzz, the social networking tool launched by Google, has currently been made available to only one percent Gmail inboxes for a ‘test drive’ with plans of rolling out the tool for rest of Gmail account holders within a week.
Commenting on the new social networking tool, Google in an official blog post that “With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you’re up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people.”
According to Google, Buzz is designed to offer a complete set of social networking features which will allow users to stay connected with their friends and family right from their Gmail inbox.
Buzz is Google’s way of targeting Facebook and Twitter by offering users similar functionality to users, right from their inbox. Find out more about Buzz here.
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