September 7, 2010 by James Oliver
News reports suggest that the search engine giants Google have reached an agreement to pay five and a half million pounds in settlement for a lawsuit brought against them, involving their social network Buzz. The social networking site, which was launched early this year, has been criticised for the alleged violation of personal privacy for online users.
Buzz automatically enrolled all users of the Google webmail service Gmail in to the network, based upon their contact settings. This meant that customers were placed in to a situation where they had either little or no control over how their contact details and address books were displayed to other users, violating privacy laws.
As a result of the alleged breach of privacy, a number of Gmail users took action against Google, in a bid to regain their privacy and address the network violation.
The agreed settlement is designed to cover legal fees, in addition to compensating users for the breach of privacy. In total, seven users of the Gmail service will be offered $2,500 each. In addition, the rest of the fee will be donated to organisations whose role is to promote privacy online for internet users.
Part of the settlement includes a decree that Google must take responsibility for educating its users about the privacy aspects of the Buzz social network. Immediately following the complaints about Buzz, Google made a series of enhancements which made it possible for users to opt out of the service, or control the people whom they chose to share contact details with online.
Don Harrison, the deputy general counsel at Google, commented: “We are looking forward to working with the attorney general’s office as we are confident that we are acting in the best interests of our users.”
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