Google Buzz

Google Buzz is a social networking and messaging tool from Google that is integrated into the company's web-based email program, Gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox.

Buzz enables users to choose to share publicly with the world or privately to a group of friends each time they post. Picasa, Flickr, Google Latitude, Google Reader, Google Sidewiki, YouTube, Blogger, FriendFeed, identi.ca and Twitter are currently integrated. The creation of Buzz was seen by industry analysts as an attempt by Google to compete with social networking websites like Facebook and microblogging services like Twitter. Buzz also includes several interface and interaction elements from other Google products (e.g. Google Reader) such as the ability to "like" a post.

Google executive Sergey Brin said that by offering social communications, Buzz would help bridge the gap between work and leisure, but the service and its rollout were strongly criticized at the time for taking insufficient account of privacy concerns.

Platform

In May 2010, Google revealed APIs for Buzz, expanding it to being a platform as well as a service. This will allow third-party developers to write software that will be able to both read and post content to Buzz. Several partners demonstrated integration via the new APIs, including Seesmic and Socialwok.

Mobile versions

When the service is accessed with a supported mobile device, Buzz tags posts with the user's current location. Users are only permitted to use the actual physical location reported by the device for their Buzz posts; unlike the Google Latitude location-sharing service, Buzz does not allow users to manually specify an arbitrary location.

The mobile version of Buzz integrates with Google Maps so users can see who is around them. Buzz posts made through Google Maps are public, and can be seen by anybody else using the software. In addition to text, mobile users' posts may include an uploaded photo. Current platforms supported are limited to devices running Android 1.6+, iOS, Windows Mobile, Openwave, and S60.

Privacy

Some of Google Buzz's features have been noted to have privacy concerns similar to those of Facebook. One feature in particular that was widely criticized as a severe privacy flaw was that by default Google Buzz publicly disclosed (on the user's Google profile) a list of the names of Gmail contacts that the user has most frequently emailed or chatted with. Users who failed to disable this feature (or did not realize that they had to) could have sensitive information about themselves and their contacts revealed.This has since been adjusted so that users now have to explicitly add information that they want public.

Google Profiles existed before Buzz and could be set by the user to be public or not. After Buzz was released, the last name field was required to be non empty.

A recent New York Times article stated that "Google is known for releasing new products before they are fully ready and then improving them over time. Google has twice tried to address privacy concerns: first by making the option to disable public sharing of contact lists more prominent and later by changing one of Buzz's features from "auto-follow" to "auto-suggest". This allows users complete control over whom they follow, and, therefore, who is revealed on their public list of contacts. These changes to the way that Google Buzz operates have, however, been criticized as inadequate and the company has been criticized for failing to take its users' privacy concerns seriously.

Among other initial problems, users who had never created a Google profile had no way to make their list of contacts or other information private, which resulted in a high-profile case involving information about a woman's current workplace and partner being shared with her abusive ex-husband.

Concerns have also been raised that because the mobile version of Google Buzz by default publishes the user's exact location when they post a message to the service, users may unintentionally reveal sensitive locations.

Legal issues

“ We have seen a storm of protest and outrage over alleged privacy violations and my office also has questions about how Google Buzz has met the requirements of privacy law in Canada...My office has a variety of resources available to help companies build privacy into their products and services. When companies consult with us at the development stage, they can avoid the problems we've seen in recent days.

On November 2, 2010, Google e-mailed Gmail users to tell them about the outcome of the lawsuit. As part of its settlement, Google will create an $8.5 million fund to award money to groups that promote privacy education on the web, of which the prosecuting lawyers are requesting 25% ($2,125,000) "plus reimbursement of costs and expenses". In January, the court will decide on final approval for the settlement.

On March 30, 2011, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Google regarding Buzz. In the announcement, the FTC agreed with the EPIC complaint that Google had violated its privacy policies by using information provided for Gmail for another purpose - social networking - without obtaining consumers’ permission in advance. The FTC also alleged that Google misrepresented that it was treating personal information from the European Union in accordance with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor privacy framework. The FTC stated that "The proposed settlement bars the company from future privacy misrepresentations, requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy audits for the next 20 years." In response to the announcement that Google has agreed to adopt a "Comprehensive Privacy Plan", EPIC launched a campaign, called "Fix Google Privacy", to encourage Internet users to offer their suggestions to improve safeguards for Google's products and services.

History

Google Buzz was announced on February 9, 2010, in a press conference at the company's Mountain View headquarters and launched on the same day, at 11 a.m. PT for the first set of users. The feature, available from the Gmail inbox, was rolled out to Gmail accounts in the following weeks. A mobile version of the site optimized for Android phones and Apple's iPhone was also launched, while a version for businesses and schools that use Google Apps is planned. Within 56 hours of its release, 9 million posts were made on Google Buzz — approximately 160,000 posts and comments per hour.