Buzz Lawsuit Costs Google $8.5m

Google has agreed to pay $8.5m to settle a class action lawsuit around Buzz social network. According to reports 30% of this amount will be used to pay legal fee. The seven users who filed the lawsuits will get $2,500 each. The remaining sum will to go privacy advocating organisations.
 
Google came under fire when it launched it Buzz in the month of February. A couple of lawsuits were filed against Google in the month of February accusing that Google Buzz violated the privacy rights of users.
 
Google had received quite a strong backlash from the users, media and privacy advocates around Buzz privacy violations.
 
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, and the heads of the data protection authorities in France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom had sent letter to the chief executive officer of Google Inc. to express their concerns about privacy issues related to Google Buzz.
 
Google recently made it privacy policies more more transparent and understandable for ordinary users. Google said in a blog post that 'We’re also simplifying our main Google Privacy Policy to make it more user-friendly by cutting down the parts that are redundant and rewriting the more legalistic bits so people can understand them more easily.'