The FTC said that following the launch of Google Buzz, the Internet giant received thousands of complaints from consumers “who were concerned about public disclosure of their email contacts which included, in some cases, ex-spouses, patients, students, employers, or competitors.”
“Although Google led Gmail users to believe that they could choose whether or not they wanted to join the network, the options for declining or leaving the social network were ineffective,” the federal agency said in a statement.
The proposed settlement would bar Google “from misrepresenting the privacy or confidentiality of individuals’ information,” the FTC said. The agreement is subject to final approval after a public comment period, the FTC said.
Even as it settled thorny issues related to Buzz, Google unveiled a new service aimed at tapping into the online social-networking trend that’s propelled younger firms such as Facebook Inc. to Buy nike cheap mens acg sandals blacksuccess. The new service is called “+1.”
The new feature allows users of Google’s market-dominating search engine to flag particular search results and advertisements for friends and contacts, by clicking on a +1 button.
Google identifies a user’s Buy nike cheap mens acg sandals blacknetwork by tapping into his or her chat and email contacts.
“We’ll be slowly rolling out +1’s, starting in English on Google.com,” Google product manager Rob Spiro wrote in a post on a company website, adding that, “in the weeks ahead they’ll appear in many more places (including other Google products and sites Buy nike cheap mens acg sandals blackacross the web).”
Google has sought to assert itself in the social-networking market in a number of ways over the years, in addition to Buzz. Its Orkut social-networking service has become popular in some foreign markets, but has failed to take hold in the U.S. Meanwhile another service for blending social-networking tools and messaging, called Wave, was scuttled last year.
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