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Countries Want More Privacy From Google Buzz
- The Wall Street Journal et al., Tuesday, April 20, 2010 1 PM
According to The Wall Street Journal, the synchronized effort represents "the latest sign of increasingly international anxiety over Google's power."
Along with Canada and Israel, the letter includes signatures from "privacy officials" in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Of chief concern, the countries take issue with Google's mapping service and its recently launched Buzz product -- or what The Associated Press calls "the company's fumbled foray into social networking."
Despite changes made to Buzz since its February debut, privacy and data-protection officials from the 10 countries said they are still "extremely concerned about how a product with such significant privacy issues was launched in the first place," The AP notes.
Meanwhile, the countries feel that the search giant launched its popular Street View mapping service without "due consideration of privacy and data protection laws and cultural norms."
Search Engine Land's Greg Sterling considers Buzz to be a "'hook' for government officials chronically unhappy with Google's stand on some privacy issues (e.g., data retention) to raise their concerns again."
And while, "These officials are right to be vigilant about privacy on behalf of their countries' residents," says Sterling, "They're wrong to single out Google ... What about Facebook, which has far more personal data than Google maintains?"
For its part, Google said in a statement cited by The BBC: "We try very hard to be upfront about the data we collect, and how we use it, as well as to build meaningful controls into our products.
"Of course we do not get everything 100% right -- that is why we acted so quickly on Buzz following the user feedback we received ... We have discussed all these issues publicly many times before."
If you're interested, GigaOm has published the joint letter in its entirety.
