Despite recently announcing it would no longer comply with government censorship in China, a bold statement that reaffirmed its reputation as the friendly free spirit of the internet, the ever-expansive Google is nevertheless having to tackle the challenge that faces any trendy start-up once it becomes the establishment figure of its sector, the end of its honeymoon relationship with early adopters and opinion formers.

Which is possibly why bloggers and tech journalists gave the web firm's latest innovation - Google Buzz - something of a lukewarm reception when it was launched earlier this month. And why many then jumped on the bandwagon when people started to express privacy concerns about the new service, which automatically set itself up on existing Gmail webmail accounts.

Google Buzz is an attempt to add Facebook and Twitter style social networking functionality to the search engine firm's existing Gmail platform, enabling users to have a more public Google profile and to share status updates with those people they most frequently communicate with via the Gmail's email and instant messaging services.

Complaints began to surface, though, over Google's decision to automatically add Buzz functionality to every GMail account, and to automatically 'connect' each GMail user with those they already communicate with frequently by email. Many GMail users objected to such connections being made without their consent, and complained that the auto-connect function revealed to others who they most frequently correspondended with in private, information they may not want made public.

But as criticism for the new service spread through the blogosphere and on Twitter, Google did react quickly, both in terms of altering those parts of the service that had caused concerns, and in issuing a statement on the issue via their own blog. A Google product manager blogged thus: "We quickly realised that we didn't get everything quite right. We're very sorry for the concern we've caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We'll continue to do so".

Google have always been good at responding quickly and honestly to issues via their own website. Whether that will be enough to overcome the decline in trust and goodwill which naturally comes with being a multi-billion dollar multi-national corporation remains to be seen.