Google Tweaks Buzz. Again.

Share

Comments (0)

Still stinging from the army of complaints about Buzz, Google (GOOG) has added yet another tool with which you can protect your privacy. As of now, you can add Buzz to Google Dashboard, the service that notifies users what information Google is collecting on you, as well as allowing you to delete what you don't want displayed to Google or the world. It's cold comfort for those who have blanched as their information has already spread to the Interwebs, or those who don't know that Dashboard exists. But Google's doing everything it can, it seems.

That may not be enough to satisfy Eva Hibnick. On Wednesday, lawyers seeking a class-action filed suit against Google on her behalf in a San Jose federal court, asking for unspecified monetary damages for publicizing information that she thought was private. Super-scary detail for Google: According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the number of potential plaintiffs could rise as high as the number of Gmail users—31.2 million.

Whoosh. So how can Google avoid making such mistakes in the future? CNet's Tom Krazit has some ideas:

The company needs to make sure it strikes a better balance between internal and external feedback. It's understandable that Google would prefer to test things with its own employees to prevent product leaks, but unless Google wants to invest in ethnographers and social scientists to balance the engineers, it will need to solicit outside feedback to make sure it understands the needs of regular people. Also, Google does not have a chief privacy officer.

Speaking of solutions, don't buy what Paul Smalera's selling on the front page of The Big Money today. Smalera argues that Google needs to hire a vice president of common sense, someone who's reasonably tech-savvy but has an innate sense of what consumers want and can nip disasters such as Buzz's privacy fiasco in the bud. Trust me: There ain't no such animal.

Imagine what such a veep would have said in 2000 when Google was just getting started. "What do you mean you're not gonna sell banner ads? What do you mean you're not gonna let companies bribe their way to the top of the page rankings? How do you think you're gonna make money? It's just common sense."

Or say said veep's focusing on the consumer's perspective. Imagine what he would have said when he heard Google was thinking about buying YouTube for $1.6 billion. "The biggest Web video hosting site on Earth? With gajillions of films of cats playing with their food? That's pure gold, baby! Who cares if you don't know how to make money off of it, or if Viacom will sue you for $1 billion? The people love it! That's just common sense."