Google releases Buzz via Gmail

02.11.10 Posted in News by Mathew

UPDATE: Randy Abrams, Director of Technical Education over at ESET, is scathing of the way Google have rolled this out, and strongly suggests you disable both Buzz AND delete your google profile if you have one. We have instructions if you need them.

Today Google rolled out another service to add to its ever growing back of tricks, this one called Buzz. The folks over at Google are clearly running scared of companies like Twitter and Facebook, which to me is rather strange, as I don’t see either of them as a threat to Google.

Google Buzz integrates with Gmail (so as far as I know, if you aren’t a Gmail user, or don’t use it on the web, no buzz for you!), and shows up an option within the Gmail website interface.

Much like Facebook and Twitter, you can post status updates, and in the case of Google Buzz, by default those updates are fully public. You can choose to share the update with specific groups of people, but those people must be in your Gmail contacts, and you need to setup groups in that interface (much like you can already do in Facebook)

You can also share links and photos, the latter get uploaded to Picasa Web Albums. That all seems to be pretty standard, although it is very strange that Google didn’t include video sharing via Youtube as well.

But here’s the big risk factor; People know Twitter is fully public, and when they use it, they know what they say is out there for everyone to see. People also know that with Facebook, they can be more private, sharing only with their friends and family.

Google Buzz is anything but private; When you start using Buzz, it makes public the people you have emailed / chatted with the most. This alone could be highly embarrassing for people, who have always used their email as a private communications medium. You will also notice that things you do on other Google websites will suddenly start being shared on Google Buzz, and that too may be something you do not want.

My major concern here is that because Google have so many varied web properties and many people use a variety of them, now that they are tying them together and publishing publicly what you are up to on them, peoples privacy is likely to get seriously invaded until they take the time to go through and adjust a myriad of privacy options.

Add to this the story that some bloggers who were using a gmail account to interact anonymously with their audience have suddenly been outed by the new Buzz feature, and the problems with the sprawling mass of websites that Google has become is brought into focus.

If you have started using Buzz, you should definitely get over to the Google Profile that you will now have (that link will take you to yours if you have signed into Gmail) and go through the settings there; You can turn off some information such as your full name and your followers from being published publicly, and if you don’t put much information into it, Google don’t include it in search results.

I’ll be turning it off shortly, once I’ve had a good play with it; Twitter and Facebook are enough for me.