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In case you haven't heard about this yet, it seems to be their version of Twitter/Facebook...remains to be seen how useful/popular it'll be, but the important thing to know is that apparently everybody who has a GMail or other Google account is now automatically signed up for Buzz. It automatically adds people from your contacts to your followers--and GMail adds everybody you've ever emailed, or who are part of the same email lists as you, to your contacts. I've always found that feature of GMail annoying, and felt kind of OCD about periodically deleting the people I didn't intend to email ever again, but that's now proved to be a good thing with regards to Buzz. I don't have any particular privacy issues with GMail, but one of my friends found Google automatically sent follow requests to people she no longer speaks to, and worse, because she'd had an anonymous email address from a dating site forwarded to her main account, people who she didn't necessarily want to know her real name. Yikes.

So, if you have a GMail account, now would be a good time to clean out those unwanted addresses in your contacts list. Also, be aware that turning off Buzz (there's a link at the bottom of the mail window to do that) doesn't actually remove you from the service; if you want to completely opt out of Buzz, you have to manually remove all the connections between services, block everyone who's currently following you, and delete your Google profile, THEN turn off Buzz. Instructions here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answ ... wer=171460.

This might turn out to be a cool service, but it seems they didn't really think through having it automatically sign you up rather than making it opt-in. I bet they're getting an awful lot of irate messages at Google HQ today.

I just dragged it into the list of hidden features. It annoys me and I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up retrenching a little, a la Facebook with its recent hamhanded privacy-related maneuvers.
Basically, this thing is Google Twitter, and as long as I don't put anything of my own on it or have to be subjected to other people's drivel, I don't care.

I haven't used my gmail account in about 3 years and I don't remember my password. And since they can't email it to me at my gmail account, I guess I'm out of the gmail business...

OZZIE4DUKE wrote:I haven't used my gmail account in about 3 years and I don't remember my password. And since they can't email it to me at my gmail account, I guess I'm out of the gmail business...

I love my Gmail. I forward school e-mail there too, so I can send and receive messages from/to both accounts from the Gmail page. I love pretty much every other Google product too, and generally believe that they're better at almost everything they do than is anyone else. This Buzz thing is among the first things they've done to really annoy me.

wilson wrote:

OZZIE4DUKE wrote:I haven't used my gmail account in about 3 years and I don't remember my password. And since they can't email it to me at my gmail account, I guess I'm out of the gmail business...

I love my Gmail. I forward school e-mail there too, so I can send and receive messages from/to both accounts from the Gmail page. I love pretty much every other Google product too, and generally believe that they're better at almost everything they do than is anyone else. This Buzz thing is among the first things they've done to really annoy me.

Succumbing to censorship in China was the first thing Google did to annoy me.

Miles wrote:

wilson wrote:

OZZIE4DUKE wrote:I haven't used my gmail account in about 3 years and I don't remember my password. And since they can't email it to me at my gmail account, I guess I'm out of the gmail business...

I love my Gmail. I forward school e-mail there too, so I can send and receive messages from/to both accounts from the Gmail page. I love pretty much every other Google product too, and generally believe that they're better at almost everything they do than is anyone else. This Buzz thing is among the first things they've done to really annoy me.

Succumbing to censorship in China was the first thing Google did to annoy me.

Yours was exactly my thought as I typed the above.

I don't have a gmail account. From what I just read, I for sure, will not be getting one. I hope yahoo mail doesn;t do the same thing thing.

From my friend's experience, and some other stuff I'm reading, Reader seems to be the biggest culprit in revealing too much to people. I've never used Reader, so I'm not clear on how and what personal information has gotten on there, but it's distressing that Google has assumed that people will automatically want people they email to have access to information without you explicitly saying it's OK. This is going to be a non-issue for most people (apparently, since I've never linked my GMail account to any of the other services, I'm not following any people I didn't choose), but there are a significant number who have very real concerns about maintaining their privacy.

gadzooks wrote:It automatically adds people from your contacts to your followers--and GMail adds everybody you've ever emailed, or who are part of the same email lists as you, to your contacts. I've always found that feature of GMail annoying,

That GMail feature annoys the living shit out of me too. I wish they would offer a way to turn it off.

wilson wrote:http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/15/technol ... s&hpt=Sbin

And finally, they make it the way it should have been to start with.

Google just makes me wanna... wanna... nothing. I don't really care. But remind me to tell you all about how Google and Apple will merge, form something similar to Skynet and destroy us all... while making it coo!!!

On logging in to one of my lesser-used email addresses today, I discovered they've made it so you can disable Buzz with a single click, rather than the convoluted process you had to go through before. So anybody who got scared off from Google, it's safe to come back now. ;)