Google Apologizes for Buzz Privacy Blunder

From DailyTech: There's an old saying "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me". Google's new Buzz service now falls under that probationary truism, as it has become embroiled in a privacy mess.

Google officially launched its Google Buzz service -- a social networking-like RSS feed which drew from Picasa, Flikr, Twitter, and Gmail only last week. Many observers worried that the service might suffer similar problems to Facebook, which raised a lot of uproar over privacy changes, and a year ago had to publicly apologize after putting users' purchases off-site (with partners) in their feeds. Not so, said Google. The search giant insisted that it would "do no evil" as its motto goes, and would protect its customers.

Unfortunately that didn't happen.

Google, whose CEO Eric Schmidt once famously remarked that those wanting privacy were probably up to no good, quickly dug itself into loads of trouble when it decided it would be a smart idea to "auto-follow" everyone its enrolled Gmail users chatted with or emailed. Users quickly responded with outrage. Google's faux pas essentially leaked users' email records. Embarrassment ensued -- everything from following ex's to friended competitors -- and many users suffered from Google's lack of discretion.

The worst part? The service was enabled by default, so any Gmail user may have had their personal info exposed -- that's millions of users.

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