Google's new social networking feature criticised
Just days after its launch, Google's new social networking service, Buzz, was threatened with legal action by a leading privacy group.
The Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic) has described Buzz, which was launched as part of Google's existing Gmail service, as "deceptive" and says that it breaks consumer protection law.
Buzz was automatically added to Gmail's 176 million user accounts, a move which has been widely criticised by privacy campaigners. Google have made changes to the service, but Epic are still concerned.
"Despite all the changes, they still do not give users a meaningful way to opt into it." said Epic's consumer privacy counsel Kim Nguyen.
"Twitter is a social networking site and people know what they are signing up for. With Gmail, users signed up for an e-mail service not a social networking service," said Ms Nguyen.
Epic has asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) make Google provide Gmail users with an opt-in facility for the Buzz service".
The organisation also wants the company barred from using Gmail address book contacts to make up social networking lists.
Buzz originally offered an 'auto follow' feature, which used Gmail contact lists to generate a circle of friends that the user can follow. Google has replaced this feature with one that just suggests who to follow but Epic said that still leaves the "user with the burden to block those unwanted followers".
Google has apologised and said it acted quickly to address concerns including introducing a new option to disable the service.
"If it becomes clear that people don't think we've done enough, we'll make more changes," said Todd Jackson, product manager for Google Buzz.
Mr Jackson admitted that testing of the service had been inadequate and that it was not opened up to a big enough group of people to try out.
"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."
He acknowledged that many of Gmail's "tens of millions" of users were "rightfully upset" and that the firm was "very, very sorry".
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