When a meaningful number of consumers get irritated over the behavior of a large company, it’s a safe bet that one or more class-action lawsuits will follow. Latest case in point: Google Buzz is the subject of a complaint filed on behalf of a Florida woman. It contends that the new feature within Gmail violated her rights by disclosing personal information–her most-frequent e-mail contacts–without her permission.

At this point, I suspect that just about everybody–including Google–agrees that Google erred in not explaining Buzz more clearly and erring on the side of privacy. The company has since tweaked the service multiple times to get things right.

But was the Buzz launch merely unfortunately rocky, or should Google face legal consequences for its actions?

 
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