In order to settle down a lawsuit that has been slapped on Google’s Buzz social network, Google has proposed paying of an amount worth $8.5m (£5.5m). With this Buzz social network, all the Gmail users were enrolled in a social network as per their contact list. This had been launched in February.

But with this service, the user had very less control over who all could view their network of contacts. Therefore, it had not been appreciated much. This service has also been alleged to violate the personal privacy of the Gmail users, who have thus taken Google to the court.

This was because the service was following an auto-follow system, and with this, the Gmail contacts went public. Google had, no doubt, provided a provision to hide information, but that was complicated, and not even clearly accessible.

Now, even after a lot many efforts have been taken by Google to improve this service, yet the lawsuit alleges that these measures are of no use. Seven Gmail users had brought this case in the court, which’ll be paid $2,500 each from the payment made by Google to the court.

Rest of the amount will be given to those organizations that help promote online privacy. Also, Google has been asked to educate its users about the privacy settings. This settlement has to seek an approval from the federal judge yet.