The search engine giant, Google Inc. on Friday announced that it has agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a privacy lawsuit over a Buzz social networking tool added to free email service Gmail in February.
The proposed settlement filed in federal court in San Francisco. The money will cover 30 percent of the settlement money and the seven named plaintiffs were to get no more than 2,500 dollars each.
The problem was, most people wanted their Gmail contacts kept private and, in some cases, for very good reasons. Google scrambled to fix the problem and made the necessary changes within days. Later it completely overhauled the system, fixing many of the issues.
In a statement Friday, Google said it was “satisfied with the agreement” and “glad to move forward.”
“Google has made changes to the Google Buzz user interface that clarify Google Buzz’s operation and users’ options regarding Google Buzz,” the settlement maintained.
It’s unclear how many Gmail users are active on Buzz. Google was trying to become equal with Facebook, which has more than 500 millions users, and Twitter, which has more than 140 million.
In addition to the new privacy policy the company hopes to add information into its help centre documentation to help users protect their information online. The Google Privacy Center will also receive a new tool which will allow users to manage their privacy settings on Google services.
Google announced that it will be streamlining its privacy policy, effective Oct. 3.