Google has received a stinging attack from leading privacy
regulators. The online giant came under fire after it had launched
a new service called Buzz that took what had previously been
private data from its Googlemail service and turned that into
publicly available data through Buzz. Buzz is Google's attempt
to rival Facebook, the social networking phenomenon. Data
protection and privacy regulators from 10 countries, including the
UK, France, Germany and Canada have written a strongly worded
letter criticising Google's practices. They said:
'Too often, the privacy rights of the world's citizens
are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological
applications...This was not the first time you have failed to take
adequate account of privacy considerations when launching new
services...It is unacceptable to roll out a product that
unilaterally renders personal information public, with the
intention of repairing problems later as they arise...Privacy
cannot be
