“Google is an innovative company that has changed how people around the world use the Internet,” the letter from these ten government representatives says. It goes on to state, “however, we are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of the world’s citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications.”

The letter, dated April 19, argues that the new social-networking application failed on the privacy front because it “automatically assigned users a network of ‘followers’ from among people with whom they corresponded most often on Gmail, without adequately informing Gmail users about how this new service would work or providing sufficient information to permit informed consent decisions.”

“This violated the fundamental principle that individuals should be able to control the use of their personal information,” the letter goes on to say, adding that Google has apologized and “moved quickly to stem the damage.”

But the letter continued to take Google to task, insisting “Google Buzz is not an isolated case,” claiming that “Google Street View was launched in some countries without due consideration of privacy and data protection laws and cultural norms.”

Finally, the letter asks Google to collect and process “only the minimum amount of personal information necessary to achieve the identified purpose of the product or service,” and take other steps, like creating “privacy-protective default settings.”