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Google agrees $8.5m Buzz settlement as lawyers fail to find monetary damage


Google has agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a number of cases alleging that its Buzz social networking service violated their privacy rights. The money will be paid out to internet privacy activists to use in their education and policy work.

Several cases were combined to form a class action suit, whose lawyers said that they intend to seek a quarter of the settlement sum in fees.

Google launched Buzz in February of this year to an immediate storm about alleged privacy violations. Users of its Gmail email system who opted to try the social networking service found that their Gmail contacts were automatically used to 'populate' Buzz.

Users objected to the fact that the system showed who a person's 'followers' were and who they 'followed', which meant that other users of Buzz could see who a person was in email contact with. They also objected to the fact that they were automatically 'followed' by people without being asked if they wanted that to happen.

Google engaged in a formal mediation process with lawyers acting for the people who sued it, and the result is the $8.5m settlement, and a requirement that Google undertake a public education programme about privacy aspects of Buzz.

"Google contends that plaintiffs have mischaracterized and misunderstood how Google Buzz operates, has denied and continues to deny plaintiffs' allegations, and denies that it has engaged in any wrongdoing whatsoever relating to Google Buzz," said the court document outlining the settlement. "Google denies that the plaintiff and putative class are entitled to any form of damages or other relief, and has maintained throughout this litigation that it has meritorious defenses to all claims alleged in the Complaint and that it was and is prepared to vigorously defend against those claims."

Nonetheless, it did engage in mediation resulting in the settlement.

As part of that process it allowed lawyers for the people behind the suit to examine all of the feedback it had received about Buzz. Despite trawling the feedback and complaints, the lawyers did not find any evidence that any mistakes made in the implementation of Buzz had cost users money.

"Class counsel has reviewed these thousands of pages of document. Class counsel also developed a coding system for the consumer comments and complaints and analyzed those. Of all consumer feedback sent to Google about Buzz, Class Counsel could identify no class members who allege that they suffered out-of-pocket damages," said the court document.

"The Settlement provides for the creation of an $8.5 million Settlement Fund. After deduction of attorneys’ fees and expenses, incentive awards and administrative cost, the balance of the Settlement Fund, in its entirety, will be paid out to cy pres recipients, who will be existing organizations focused on Internet privacy policy or privacy education," said the Court, the US District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.

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