google buzz class action, google buzz settlement, google buzz class action lawsuit, google buzz lawsuit, google buzz class action settlement

google buzz class action, google buzz settlement, google buzz class action lawsuit, google buzz lawsuit, google buzz class action settlement

google will start a fund worth $8. 5 million to assist compensate for lawyer expenses and provide funding for nonprofits focused on privacy education after resolving a class-action lawsuit slamming google buzz’s privacy issues, it announced today.

the google buzz privacy controversy ended up all but crushing the budding status-update service, google’s response to facebook and twitter. The financial cost is tiny: google is preparing to compensate out with regards to one tenth of a percent of its quarterly revenue to compensate for its missteps. Google brings in around $25 billion a year, and just last quarter brought in closely $7. 3 billion.

but the blow to google’s effigy, and the lingering perception that google is tone-deaf with regards to social media and user privacy, have proven far more expensive. Google has not long back expended hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring companies to build up its presence in social networking.

google had hoped to build up buzz on top of its huge base of users for its free email service, gmail. It publicly admitted to automatically enrolling its gmail users in buzz and publicly exposing their email contact data, as stated by the lawsuit web-site. Google’s former promise of $2,500 for complainants listed in the class-action lawsuit appears to no longer be in effect. Google even sent an email message out to every google buzz user, only to let them acknowledge they weren’t becoming a dime from the lawsuit. A quarter of the $8. 5 million fund is there to compensate the lawyers involved in the lawsuit.

google buzz launched in february this year, and was designed to incorporate seamlessly with the inboxes of users of google’s gmail email service. The integration worked a bit too well, stirring up a hornet’s nest after users discovered any buzz user could see their entire list of contacts. Granted, google speedily remedied the privacy woes in its social tool, but the damage was done by that point. Google has since introduced a much more visible way to hide your contacts.

does google deserve what fundamentally equates to a free pass over a privacy fiasco of this magnitude? Peeved buzz users have until december 6 to undertake to sue the pants off the net giant one again before the class action comes to a close.

and if they’re genuinely ticked off after that, they may studiously keep out of the way of google’s as-yet-unannounced social networking services.

Source: venturebeat

Posted by musicking on Nov 3 2010. Filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry