News: Google Pulls Back Buzz

After launching five days ago, Google bent to criticism by altering privacy setting on its controversial new social networking service, Google Buzz.

The search giant copped flack for its decision to automatically assign followers to accounts by scanning user’s inbox for frequent contacts. This weekend, Google changed the model to simply suggesting contacts, rather than automatically choosing them.

“We’ve heard your feedback loud and clear, and since we launched Google Buzz four days ago, we’ve been working around the clock to address the concerns you’ve raised,” said Todd Jackson,Gmail and Google Buzz product manager in a blog post. “We quickly realized that we didn’t get everything quite right. We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback.”

Along with changing follower settings, Google has also included a more visible option for turning the service off entirely, and has pulled back from sharing some of the information found in Google Reader or Picassa.

The move follows a number of vocal complaints about Buzz exposing private information, including a blogger who was automatically assigned as a friend of her abusive ex-husband.