Google’s Opponent Complain against the Settlement for Buzz

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) had pushed the U.S. regulators to search and investigate Google Inc., and now it is becoming is all steamed up for not being involved in the class action settlement with the search giant’s Buzz social network.

EPIC filed its objection to the settlement in court just this week implying that Google has cleverly chosen to fund only those groups which are already gaining assistance from the generosity giant of a company. Privacy advocate, Marc Rotenberg, filed the complaint representing EPIC’s concern with the Federal Trade Commission last year. It said that Buzz has put the privacy of all Gmail users in complete danger. As a consequences of this complaint, Google recently settled it with FTC on Wednesday, to have to independent privacy audits from third party companies.

Last year, Google resolved the separate class action lawsuit by a Gmail user with the deal of pouring more than $6 million in hiring groups advocating for Internet privacy issues for auditing. Now EPIC has demanded the court to have $1.75 million. Whereas, Google and plaintiff lawyers bestowed that money to groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Brookings Institution, EPIC was not given a single penny.

EPIC has now gathered few other groups in its favor as well, as it claims an objection in a court filing this Wednesday. The objection claims that almost greater part of these funds is being allocated to the groups which already "receive support from Google for lobbying, consulting, or similar services."

Interestingly EPIC has not yet disclosed any specific groups which it claims to be involved with Google for its lobbying services. EPIC has quoted in its filing that it expects to the court to reject a deal "that encourages organizations to stand by quietly while others do the actual work of safeguarding Internet privacy."

Rotenberg has not been responding to any of the questions raised by the media related to court filing. Whereas, Google representatives have also refused to comment on this matter, while they lawyers of plaintiff are not even reachable. Whereas the case has been filed in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is In Re Google Buzz User Privacy Litigation, 10-672.