Google Trying To Find Balance With Buzz
Two weeks after Google's new social networking site Buzz was met with a barrage of criticism for lacking adequate privacy controls, Google's deputy general counsel acknowledged it is not easy to find the right balance between making a product user friendly and ensuring it respects user privacy.
During a briefing Thursday with reporters, Nicole Wong discussed Google's approach to privacy more broadly but also commented on the controversy surrounding Buzz. Since the launch of Buzz, the Internet firm has made numerous changes to the service including making it easier for users to set privacy settings or to disable it altogether.
There is a "tension of how do we present this to a user to make them comfortable in this new space and yet really figure out what will work and won't," Wong said, adding that
Google has tried to "iterate quickly" in response to user feedback.
She noted that many users asked why Google didn't release a beta version of Buzz. She said it was tested extensively among 20,000 Google employees. Wong acknowledged, however, that "we didn't see everything because we were in a closed environment and you can't actually know how a social network will work until you get it out there in the wild." She added that even "if we had done a limited beta it's not clear to me that we would have gotten a different result. That's the thing we have to figure out."
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the FTC last week urging the agency to "require Google to make the Buzz service fully opt-in, to stop using Gmail users' private address book contacts to compile social networking lists and to give Google users meaningful control over their personal data."
When asked why Google didn't make Buzz a service that users had to choose to opt-in to using, Wong said that "you do have to set it up, so it is opt-in in that sense ... within the context of your Gmail" e-mail service.
She said that Google has been in touch with the FTC about EPIC's complaint but did not elaborate.
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