• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 30, 2011

Google has agreed to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission stemming fro the search company's launch of Buzz. In its complaint, made public today, the FTC alleged that Google violated its own privacy policy and used deceptive tactics when it launched its social network Buzz.

The settlement calls for Google to implement a privacy program, and submit to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years.

When Google debuted Buzz, the service created social networks from people's Gmail contacts. But Google designed the feature so that it initially revealed information about the names of users' email contacts, if users activated Buzz without changing the defaults.