Google settles with FTC, unveils new social tool

(GOOG 582.10, +0.26, +0.05%) apologized for glitches related to its Buzz service, which triggered litigation and scrutiny from regulators following complaints about user control of private information. The company said that it’s reached an agreement with the FTC whereby it will be required to have its privacy and data protection practices audited by an independent third party every two years, for the next 20 years.
“We don’t always get everything right,” Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy, product and engineering wrote in a company blog post. “The launch of Google Buzz fell short of our usual standards for transparency and user control — letting our users and Google down.”
The FTC said that following the launch of Google Buzz, the Internet giant received thousands of complaints from consumers “who were concerned about public disclosure of their email contacts which included, in some cases, ex-spouses, patients, students, employers, or competitors.”
“Although Google led Gmail users to believe that they could choose whether or not they wanted to join the network, the options for declining or leaving the social network were ineffective,” the federal agency said in a statement.
The proposed settlement would bar Google “from misrepresenting the privacy or confidentiality of individuals’ information,” the FTC said. The agreement is subject to final approval after a public comment period, the FTC said.
Even as it settled thorny issues related to Buzz, Google unveiled a new service aimed at tapping into the online social-networking trend that’s propelled younger firms such as Facebook Inc. to success. The new service is called “+1.”
The new feature allows users of Google’s market-dominating search engine to flag particular search results and advertisements for friends and contacts, by clicking on a +1 button.
Google identifies a user’s network by tapping into his or her chat and email contacts.
“We’ll be slowly rolling out +1’s, starting in English on Google.com,” Google product manager Rob Spiro wrote in a post on a company website, adding that, “in the weeks ahead they’ll appear in many more places (including other Google products and sites across the web).”
Google has sought to assert itself in the social-networking market in a number of ways over the years, in addition to Buzz. Its Orkut social-networking service has become popular in some foreign markets, but has failed to take hold in the U.S. Meanwhile another service for blending social-networking tools and messaging, called Wave, was scuttled last year.
Google’s new +1 feature is similar to the “Like” feature available to Facebook users, which enables them to recommend items to contacts with a single click.
Facebook, too, has been the subject of widespread privacy complaints, and has come under FTC scrutiny as a result. The closely-held firm has nonetheless grown rapidly to an estimated 600 million users, and is expected to undertake a high-profile initial public offering of shares next year.
In addition to Facebook, other relatively young firms making their mark on the social-networking business include Twitter Inc., the closely-held microblogging service, Zynga Inc., which develops social games including FarmVille, and LinkedIn Corp., the provider of a professional online networking service that has filed papers for an IPO.
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