Google to pay $8.5 mn to settle Buzz privacy leaks

San Francisco, Sep 6: The search engine giant, Google Inc, has agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a privacy lawsuit over a Buzz social networking tool added to free email service Gmail in Feb 2010.

The controversy over Google was that it's social networking tool, Google Buzz, was taking a user's Gmail contacts and automatically adding them to their public Buzz social network.

Later Google made changes to the Google Buzz user interface that clarify Google Buzz's operation and users' options regarding Google Buzz. Now Gmail users have to create a Google Buzz public profile and can view, edit or hide lists of people in their online circles. Google also gave users the ability to block anyone following their account.

The proposed agreement to settle the lawsuit revealed that Google has to invest a major portion of the money for education or in organizations devoted to Internet privacy policy. The court also asked Google to do more to educate people about privacy at Buzz.

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