Google Buzzed with Lawsuit

<i>Insular ivory tower, meet world.</i><p>It's one thing to have a bug in a piece of software, it's completely another when that bug is "by design" and exposes people's personal information without their consent. This should be a lesson to other social network sites and startups that want to enter this space. "The user's personal data is sacred." Even if Google wins the suit, this is really very reputation damaging. People who don't know the details will likely only hear that "Google exposed people's private contacts to the world."<p>I've more or less accepted Google's apology on face value, but I was thinking about this again last night, and given all the recent hubbub about the Chinese hacker break-in, and how it target specific accounts of political dissidents, this really seems like a particularly inexcusable oversight. In theory this is obviously true, and in practice we already know of a case where a woman was found by her abusive ex-husband.

I remember how this very same negative attention (and threatening lawsuits) occurred when gmail was released and everyone realized that an algo would scan your email to serve ad's against it.<p>Unfortunately, Google's pompous behavior over Buzz is cold and calculated.

Personally I'm glad they are getting sued. Google has the mentality that they can do whatever they want and that they are above the law. If its illegal then they will get the law changed. I used to be a huge fan of google but as time goes on their true colors seem to be coming out. They don't give a damn about anything but getting data.