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Del.icio.usGoogle, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) shares surged as much as .65 percent to $585.50 in morning trading Wednesday, after the internet giant announced it had settled privacy charges with the Federal Trade Commission over Google Buzz. Despite the news, volume for the company was a modest 727,237 after lunch Wednesday, compared to a daily average over 2.5 million.
Per the agreement reached, the Mountain View, California-based Google has agreed to establish a “comprehensive privacy program”, while not admitting to any wrong-doing. This settlement resolves allegations that last year’s launch of Google Buzz, a venture into social networking by the Web giant, initially shared more information than users reasonably expected. The privacy program established includes regular reports on its privacy practices prepared by an independent professional for the next 20 years.
On the Official Google blog, the company stated, “The launch of Google Buzz fell short of our usual standards for transparency and user control—letting our users and Google down. While we worked quickly to make improvements, regulators—including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission—unsurprisingly wanted more detail about what went wrong and how we could prevent it from happening again. Today, we’ve reached an agreement with the FTC to address their concerns. We’ll receive an independent review of our privacy procedures once every two years, and we’ll ask users to give us affirmative consent before we change how we share their personal information.”
The settlement, approved 5-0 by the commissioners, is subject to public comment and final approval.
Jon Leibowitz, the Democratic chairman of the FTC, commented, “When companies make privacy pledges, they need to honor them. 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.”
Tags: buzz stocks, GOOG, technology, Technology Stocks