Pat Dollard

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Times Online:

Google has been forced into a hasty revamp of its social networking service Buzz after the new feature was met with a storm of criticism because of gaping privacy flaws.

The company today announced it will introduce a prominent “kill button” that will allow people to turn off Buzz altogether.

Central to the row is a feature that automatically joined Gmail users to the service but also revealed the identities of the people they e-mailed most frequently. The blunder was met with a torrent of complaints including one woman who said that an abusive ex-husband could now follow her every move.

Google has now apologised, announcing they will fix Buzz so that Gmail users can now choose who they want to be “friends” under the system. Sources at the company said today that the new changes will be implemented in “the next couple of days”.

The company has set up a war-room at its headquarters in an attempt to fix problems – with programmers working round the clock. Yesterday, comments made by Google’s chief executive seem to play down the problem, fuelling the PR disaster.

The search firm has admitted that the Buzz system was not adequately tested before it was unveiled, with only internal Google employees playing with the system before launch – rather than members of public also testing it, as is often the case with products of this type.

Yesterday, Canadian authorities said they were launching an investigation into Buzz over privacy concerns, while US campaigners said they had lodged privacy complaints with American government agencies.

Jeff Jarvis, a respected technology expert from the blog Buzz Machine said: “It’s awkward… Worse, Google didn’t think through critical issues of privacy.”

Robert Scoble, another prominent technology blogger wrote: “They made some horrid mistakes.”

Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, following critical questioning at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, seemed to downplay the problems surrounding Buzz.

“I would say that we did not understand how to communicate Google Buzz and its privacy,” he said. “There was a lot of confusion when it came out on Tuesday and people thought that somehow we were publishing their e-mail addresses and private information, which was not true.

“I think it was our fault that we did not communicate that fact very well, but the important thing is that no really bad stuff happens in the sense that nobody’s personal information was disclosed.”