Google Inc. introduced its latest attempt to crack Facebook Inc.'s hold on social networking on Wednesday, but not before agreeing to a "comprehensive privacy program" that settles a Federal Trade Commission charge that the search giant's Google Buzz feature violated privacy rights.
The Mountain View company is rolling out a social sharing feature called "+1," which gives users a way to share their search results with friends. The +1 button gives Google a feature that's comparable to Facebook's increasingly popular "Like" button, which is helping to spread the Palo Alto social network's reach to thousands of websites.
"It's called +1 - the digital shorthand for 'this is pretty cool,' " Google product manager Rob Spiro said in an announcement posted on the company blog.
Clicking the button near a search result or online ad creates a personal recommendation that will then be displayed in the search results of others who are within their Google network, such as e-mail contacts or chat buddies.
As an example, Spiro said, a search for a trip to Tahoe would pull up a result for that shows "a +1 from your slalom-skiing aunt next to the result for a lodge in the area. Or if you're looking for a new pasta recipe, we'll show you +1's from your culinary genius college roommate. And even if none of your friends are baristas or caffeine addicts, we may still show you how many people across the Web have +1'd your local coffee shop."
Other connections
Spiro said the company plans to spread the button to more Google products and other websites, and will incorporate "other signals, such as your connections on sites like Twitter."
Google will slowly introduce the +1 feature in English on google.com, but it requires users to have a Google account and to fill out a Google profile that lists personal information, which can be displayed or hidden from public view.
The +1 button is making its appearance nearly a year after Facebook began spreading its reach throughout the Web with its "Like" button, which recommends news stories and other items to a Facebook user's personal network.
And the feature comes at a time when Facebook is becoming a stronger competitor to Google for advertising revenue. According to the research firm eMarketer Inc., Facebook will have a 21.6 percent share of the $10.1 billion online display ad market in the United States in 2011, compared with Google's 12.6 percent. Google still dominates the $13.59 billion search advertising market, with a projected $10.2 billion in revenue this year, eMarketer said.
But Google has stumbled trying to incorporate social networking into its products. Four hours before unveiling +1, Google announced it had agreed to a comprehensive privacy program to settle a Federal Trade Commission charge that Google Buzz violated the privacy rights of users.
The FTC charged that when Google released Buzz in February 2010 through its free online e-mail service Gmail, it deceptively led 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," according to the FTC.
The feature let users to post updates and other links within Gmail. But privacy advocates criticized the way "followers" were selected based on who they sent frequent messages to and that those followers, plus photos and information shared on Google Reader and Picasa, were also visible.
According to the proposed settlement, Google is banned from "misrepresenting the privacy or confidentiality of individuals' information," required to get users' consent if it changes the way its products or services share personal information, and must have an independent privacy audit done every two years for the next 20 years.
"When companies make privacy pledges, they need to honor them," FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. "This is a tough settlement that ensures that Google will honor its commitments to consumers and build strong privacy protections into all of its operations."
Buzz apology
In a company blog post, Google privacy director Alma Whitten apologized for Google Buzz.
"The launch of Google Buzz fell short of our usual standards for transparency and user control - letting our users and Google down," Whitten said. "While today's announcement thankfully put this incident behind us, we are 100 percent focused on ensuring that our new privacy procedures effectively protect the interests of all our users going forward."
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research group in Washington, filed a complaint with the FTC after Google Buzz was released and argued that users should be able to opt in to the service instead of having to opt out. The group has also lodged complaints with the FTC about Facebook's privacy policies.
The group's executive director, Marc Rotenberg, praised the FTC's action against Google and said the settlement should have a wide-ranging effect against other Internet companies, including Facebook.
"The FTC decision follows directly from the complaint filed ... early last year," Rotenberg said in an e-mail. "This is the most significant privacy decision from the FTC to date. For Internet users, it should lead to higher privacy standards and better protection for personal data."
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This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/30/BU671IMOFR.DTL#ixzz1IKk8rPVB
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