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Google Settles Buzz Privacy Suit
bouldin writes "This evening, Google e-mailed Gmail users who had been invited to Google Buzz to advise of settlement on a class-action privacy suit. The class action suit alleged privacy breaches due to the default privacy settings when Google rolled out the service. Terms of the settlement include $8 million to cover lawyer fees and fund privacy policy education on the Internet, but do not include cash payouts to Gmail users. With several outstanding class action privacy suits against Facebook and Zynga, it is interesting to see Google set this precedent."
welcome our new, eight million dollar richer, lawyer Overlords.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They sent me an automatic message into my two Gmail accounts.
Which were then, ironically, filtered into the 'Spam' folder automatically. How awesome is that?
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
What precedent? Settling a privacy class action suit by promising to pay millions to fund some kind of privacy foundation, and no payment to individual users?
Facebook did that last year when it settled the class action suit over its "beacon" program.
Terms of the settlement include $8 million to cover lawyer fees and fund privacy policy education on the Internet
Lawyers: $8M
HR Consultants to teach "Privacy policy Education": Some token amount
Actual users who got @#$%ed: $0
There's justice for you. There needs to be a law established that in a class action suit, the lawyers can get no more than x times the average defendant payout.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
just a polite way of saying fuck you, you stupid users
Even if Google said I could get $50 from the lawsuit I wouldn't accept it. I have no reason to take Google's $50 when it was up to me to learn about my privacy on Google Buzz. Plus, Google has done so much for me in the past that it would be like stealing money from a friend. Cannot do that. Freakin lawyers, bunch of [my attorney has advised me not to complete this sentence].
One never knows when one may want to sue Google over privacy concerns. This is a good way for them to put a blanket over millions of potential future lawsuits.
Summary says: Terms of the settlement include $8 million to cover lawyer fees and fund privacy policy education on the Internet, but do not include cash payouts to Gmail users.
Article sez: It will also be used to pay the lawyers and the people who sued.
Article also says 8.5 mil... Maybe the submitter read a different article
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
"...With several outstanding class action privacy suits against Facebook and Zynga, it is interesting to see Google set this precedent."
Just goes to show you that as with most free services, you get what you pay for. And they (lawyers) get what they "paid" for.
The lawyers are taking home 25% of the 8.5 million (plus interest), plus reimbursement of costs and expenses, according to the class action website.
Frankly, if I had to choose between a company keeping the money it has earned versus going to a random group of lawyers, I'd go with the former. Maybe I'd be more for punishing an organization financially if they were engaging in risky behavior and refusing to stop; however, from what I can remember about the incident, Google apologized and shut the thing down quickly (I'm not 100% on that, though).
First of all, this only affects US citizens.
If you used GMail after February 9, 2010 then you *must* opt out of this settlement or you will lose your right to sue Google for privacy violations - forever - with no compensation.
To exclude yourself from the Settlement, you must send a letter or other written document by mail saying that you want
to be excluded from In re Google Buzz User Privacy Litigation, No. 5:10-cv-00672-JW. Be sure to include your full
name, address, reason why you want out of the Settlement, as well as proof that you used Gmail at some point after February 9, 2010, your signature, and the date. You must mail your request for exclusion so that it is received no later
than December 6, 2010, to:
CLASS ACTION ADMINISTRATOR
In re Google Buzz User Privacy Litigation
c/o The Garden City Group, Inc.
P.O. Box 91088
Seattle, WA 98111-9188
You cannot ask to be excluded on the phone, by email, or at the website. An exclusion request is not a claim for payment.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Where is the official link from Google explaining this? I saw an email from "Google", and writeup from the Guardian about that email. This sounds like a phishing attempt.
As long as the lawyers made money, I guess it's OK....
Thanks to all who created this meaningless suit.
Mine wasn't. I guess enough people marked it as Spam to train Google's filters...
They sent me an automatic message into my two Gmail accounts.
Which were then, ironically, filtered into the 'Spam' folder automatically. How awesome is that?
Mine just came in to my priority inbox. I think you are joking. Har.
Do I, the AC Gmail user, get some money? Pretty please?
That's okay, I don't need any money, but thanks for telling me anyway!
Ironic that the only way to opt out of the privacy settlement is to mail in your full name, address, phone number and signature.
..or does this lawsuit/settlement not differentiate those who used Gmail without Buzz and those who actually used Buzz?
It could be the lack of sleep talking, but why would one be included into a class action if you never used said spinoff "Buzz" before and opted out when they deployed it.
Mine went to Junk. you use priority inbox? har.
Check out below for updated info
http://hydgeeks.blogspot.com/2010/11/important-information-about-google-buzz.html
It's a conspiracy.
As a frequent Buzz user who also cares deeply about online privacy, this settlement seems just about right to me. I would much rather my fellow users were educated about how to protect their privacy online than have a few extra pennies in my pocket (and that is about what this would amount to if paid out in cash to every class member). I actually wish more class action settlements would end like this. How many times have I been notified that I was part of a class winning a class action only to be informed my share was less than my time was worth to read the damn letter in the first place? (I'll tell you: three times). In any one of those cases I would much rather that my share had been aggregated together with every other class member's and put to a good cause.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Google Settles Buzz Privacy Suit - Refund Issued to All Gmail Users
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
Question: why sue? What if we (the 'class') would've just asked Google nicely to change Buzz? Would've been a hell of a lot cheaper, right? I'm not a US citizen, so maybe this is a weird question?
Passing silhouettes of strange illuminated mannequins
It informed me that a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of all Citibank credit card customers had been won. I don't remember the exact number, but they were pretty obscene. The judgment was for like $50 million and $30 million was going to the lawyers while $20 million was going to some charity selected by the lawyers. I considered becoming a lawyer and suing lawyers on behalf of people who get 'represented' by these guys.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I imagine:
Lawyers: $7,999,999.
Privacy Policy Education Fund: $1.
I personally have a problem when I live in Georgia and a California judge arbitrarily lumps me into a class action without my consent. The simple fact that Google believes they can avoid a major problem by misleading people into believing that a California judge has the power to take away your rights arbitrarily is disconcerting. No matter whether you send in your letter, if you do not live in California, you are not binded to this class action unless you specifically stated so, and even those that live in California have a right to object, because no judge can force a ruling upon subjects, no matter how many options he/she proposes to make his ruling seem legit.
I have used Buzz for a month now and I'm quite satisfied with its functionality. IMHO Google Buzz is way different from what we all thought and is much more sophisticated. Buzz is some sort like Facebook operates in Twitter mode, that is, conversations and social interactions are made in Facebook style, but the social connection model is Twitter's public follower/followee style.
I feel that Google Buzz was already designed for public communication since it is launched. Currently I'm following 90 people with professional Google Profile who I think have use Buzz in the correct way. By professional I mean, these people write meaningful microblog posts that span few paragraph, share interesting links that talk about technology, and have meaningful discussion with their followers. I think the private features are just minor side features that allow some private communication, but Google is not really interested in that and the private features have proved to be more troublesome than is useful.
Google Buzz is just so much cooler than Twitter when you use it in a public way. You can post messages as long as you want, no 140 characters limit on Twitter and 420 characters limit on Facebook; You can write comment directly on someone's Buzz post and seen by everyone directly; You can embed links, photos, and videos directly in your Buzz post - no more short URL; You can "retweet" someone's Buzz post easily by clicking the reshare button. When Buzz is so powerful, I just don't see the point of using Twitter anymore.
Behind the scene, Google Buzz is also significantly different than other social networks. The protocol behind Buzz is really just the core product Google is creating, and Google Buzz is expected to be one of the providers within the decentralized Buzz social network. Google has developed various technologies such as PubSubHubbub and Salmon protocol in hope to create a public, open, and decentralized social network, but we all fail to see the true value behind Buzz. Still though, I don't really like the current Buzz protocols, and I think there are better ways to build such protocols.
Google Buzz also has significantly improve its privacy settings since its troublesome debut. When I first used Google Buzz, Buzz will notify me that the stuff that I'm doing is public whenever I first time made public actions such as posting public message, comment in public posts, follow other public profiles, like or reshare a post. And to avoid people confused on the publicy of their actions, the privacy scope is shown clearly in each and every post. It even states clearly on resharing that "X people publicly reshared this". Sometimes I even found it too annoying and thought, why don't Buzz says "X people publicly liked this" as well.
I think the biggest mistake Google Buzz has is its integration with Gmail. Google first introduced Buzz through Gmail in the hope of gaining market share through Gmail - HUGE mistake. There is a fundamental mismatch between Buzz and Gmail - Buzz is public oriented but Gmail is private oriented, and when public features are mixed into private account, disaster happens. While I am happy to have a public Buzz profile, I don't necessary want to correlate it with my private Gmail profile. That's why I created a separate Google account just for the use of Google Buzz. Now it's not that I have embarrassing stuff associated in my email account, but I want a way to clearly separate my public and private identities - albeit a weak separation that people can still find out the link if they want it bad enough because I made no effort to hide the link. We just need a way to separate identity from account - so that we can create multiple identities (persona) in one account and associate the identities with different purposes and privacy scope.
The other problem of Buzz integrated with Gmail is that the UI sux. Google Buzz is no way similar to Gmail, and forcefully cram the Buzz interface into existing Gmail interface is stupid. It would be much better to move Buzz into a separate page, to make both products less bloated.
Well that's it. I'm going to give up on suing companies for making hot beverages and switch to suing over my privacy!
Cash set aside for lawyers, THEN leftovers to NPOs? 1. How much will the NPOs see? 2. Will the chosen NPOs be specially selected as sympathetic to the Google view on privacy? 3. Was this money already pre-allocated for NPOs before the settlement? [not taking sides; asking questions!]
I read about something like this every couple of weeks. Usually the benefactor is our State or Federal government. I have even experienced this at a much greater scale.
About 5 years ago my wife needed some surgery. Our surgery was covered by my insurance. The doctor's staff reviewed our insurance and said we had "great insurance" and that they never have problems with our insurance.
Anyways, she had the surgery and a few months later we received a bill for over 10 thousand of dollars. Turns out that our insurance covered 90% of the cost of the surgery, but only 90% of the cost that some data base said the surgery was worth. The data base said the surgery was worth just over $1000. So they covered a little less than $1000 of a $10,000 plus bill.
Of course this was BS so we refused to pay and two years later we were in court owing over $20,000 (late fees, collection fees, midnight slamming on the door and scaring the kids by the local police fees...)
We lost in court and we were chastised by the judge.
We couldn't pay and ended up filing bankruptcy.
Well, that was the background. Now to the point. Last years it was determined that the company that determines what a procedure is worth is wholly owned by the insurance company that writes the checks. Not only that but the insurance company saved 100s of millions of dollars because they didn't have to pay as much as they would have.
The punishment on the insurance company was that they had to pay a fine of $50 million dollars to the State. This BS bankrupted us.
Go figure...
They sent me an automatic message into my two Gmail accounts.
Which were then, ironically, filtered into the 'Spam' folder automatically. How awesome is that?
Mine was set to priority by default.
People signed up for Gmail without any expectation that their address book would be used to distribute information about their habits. Google did that, did it without permission and even did it without notice.
I'm amazed that Google thought that people wouldn't have a problem with those moves.
My guess is that there was a socially retarded executive at Google who thought people would like it, had enough power to silence the common sense wielding opposition to push the release of Buzz through.
To Googles credit, once people started screaming they did a quick 180 and apologized.
Facebook made private information public, by default, without notice, without permission, not only did not apologize, but told people they would learn to like it.
"With several outstanding class action privacy suits against Facebook and Zynga, it is interesting to see Google set this precedent"
That is, of course, unless you know the first thing about the law. In that case, you are aware that one defendent deciding to settle doesn't set a precedent at all for other defendents in separate lawsuits (even if the nature of those suits is similar).
Between that, my lack of interest in suing Google over this matter, and my general antipathy toward class actions in practice, I find this terribly uninteresting.
I would rather somebody sued google and got the issue noticed by public, punished the company (albeit tiny bit) and there will be a public funding of privacy awareness campaign (however small). Than the alternative, of total apathy (which sadly is the case for majority).
Nonsense! They offered to refund every cent I've paid them for my Gmail service for the last half-decade I've been with them, which totaled to $0.00.
Mine was starred but also filtered as Spam.
See subject-line gmhowell: What have you ever done that is noted as good or decent in printed publications in the art and sciences of computing, you little /. bullshitter? Answer = nothing. gmhowell the "big talker" that hasn't done a damn thing in this science, but he sure "talks big" trolling others.