Credit: Reuters

Canada’s privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, really “harshed Google’s Buzz” this week, reminding the Mountain View, Calif., company its new Buzz social media service needed to comply with Canadian privacy laws. As @mashable reported, this is the same office that forced major changes on Facebook last year …

Stoddart, in speaking to @nationalpost, said:

“We have seen a storm of protest and outrage over alleged privacy violations and my Office also has questions about how Google Buzz has met the requirements of privacy law in Canada.”

Stoddart went on to say she was disappointed Google had not consulted her office prior to launch.

Never mind the PR firestorm or even Stoddart’s privacy challenge, the real fun is just beginning as Harvard law student Eva Hibnick launches a class-action lawsuit against Google on behalf of 31 million Gmail users. From eBrandz.com:

“I feel like they did something wrong,” said Hibnick, an active Gmail user and second-year law student. “They opted me into this social network and I did not want it.”

@mathewi (ex of the Globe and Mail, now at Gigaom.com) nailed it in saying: “So what was Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s response? To suggest that users are overreacting, that ‘no one was harmed,’ and to effectively blame users for misunderstanding the terms of the new service. Blaming your users — that’s pretty classy.”

Indeed, not the response one might hope for from the supposed keeper of the famous Google “Don’t be evil” mantra.

Speaking of buzz kills, there’s nothing like a stern talking to from David Letterman to sour the mood. The late night talk-show host took a few serious moments the other night to berate Olympics officials for “blaming the victim” in the recent death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. As reported by @TheDailyBlonde “David Letterman on luger death: Winter Olympics officials are hypocrites”. Ouch, however Frances Bula’s article shared on @guardiannews pointed out a slight irony:

“If you care to actually look back at the coverage, it was the American head of the International Luge Federation who kicked off the line that the track was perfectly safe and that it was Kumaritashvili’s mistake that caused his death.”

Bula’s article also nicely tackles the weirdness that is the British press piling on the Vancouver Olympics. @Timesonline has dubbed Vancouver 2010 “the Calamity Games”. Martin Samuel of @MailOnline wrote “(Canadians can) put their Maple Leaf stamp on something more instantly tangible: the nondescript little box carrying the lifeless body of Nodar Kumaritashvili back to his home in Bakuriani, Georgia.” A quick Google search verifies the phrase “worst games ever” appears nearly 10,000 times.

There are plenty of Vancouver defenders. Take Paola Boivin’s Arizona Republic article for instance:

“Even Renee Smith-Valade, VANOC’s communications chief, has maintained impressive poise while coming under fire. ‘It’s not whether your luggage gets lost,’ she said, ‘but how you deal with it.’ Tough start? You bet. Worst Olympics ever? Hardly.”

Or Bruce Arthur’s piece in @nationalpost:

“It’s easy to dismiss the words of the organizer, but I lived here for 27 years, and I agree with him. This Olympics is a remarkable festival. People are having fun. You could call that a success, if you bothered to look. And as for the kinks, I agreed with Furlong there, too, when

he said ‘When we make mistakes, we have to fix them.’”

Maybe they’re right about one thing – Canadians aren’t always nice. Bula shares a few of the anti-Brit snarks flying around Vancouver these days:

“Oh, if you insist: failed-empire fanatics taking it out on their former colony; losers whom a recent poll said only wash their bedsheets three times a year; wankers just trying to deflect negative coverage about London’s impending Olympics debacle.”

All this negativity has left a bad taste in my mouth. I think I’ll go have my teeth cleaned – a procedure allegedly foreign to British nationals.

As usual, send me your feedback on Twitter at @dblacombe or via e-mail doug@communicatto.com.

Doug Lacombe is president of communicatto.com, a digital marketing, investor and public relations agency.

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