Google to be audited every 2 years

Google has reached an agreement with the FTC over its privacy concerns over Buzz.

Google violated its own privacy policies and used "deceptive tactics" when it launched Google Buzz in 2010. According to the FTC, when Buzz was integrated into Gmail, users were not given a good enough explanation about how the new social network would operate. Specifically, controls for limiting the share of personal information were hard to find and trying to leave the network all together was confusing and sometime ineffective.

For this, Google has officially apologized over this mistake on its blog:

We’d like to apologize again for the mistakes we made with Buzz. 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.

An update on Buzz [via]