Tobold's Blog
Sunday, February 14, 2010
 
Buzz

I'm on Buzz, and you can find my profile here. That doesn't help you much if you haven't got a Google account, but if you have, you can use Buzz as a kind of Twitter replacement with slightly more features. The downside is that Buzz isn't great on privacy, and unless you find a bunch of hidden settings other people might be able to see who you are exchanging e-mails with. Not a secret in my case, but I do understand how that annoys some people.

For me Buzz is mainly one more amusing step of Google on the way towards becoming the next "evil empire" in the public opinion, like Microsoft. Besides privacy concerns other people are complaining how Google uses "bundling" with GMail to promote Buzz, an unfair competitive practice against Twitter. Now where did I hear that one before?
Comments:
Saw Buzz the other day and turned of everything to do with it.

The privacy is downright non existent. To quote you T,"but I do understand how that annoys some people"... would it simply annoy you if I was looking over your shoulder making notes of who you sent regular mail to? Your bank manager, your solicitor or family members?

I know your use of the word "annoy" boils down to semantics... but if Buzz really lets you see who mail was sent to, especially without the option to 'sign up' to said function... then I'm pretty disgusted with Google.

As for Google becoming an evil empire... evil (debatable) I think they are lying over china and reasons for pulling out. I think they were shafted by Chinese protectionism and just threw their 'Sindy Doll' on the floor and had a tantrum. Google were never able to compete with the native Chinese search engine. It wasn't about human rights imho.

But Google are becoming too big and touching too many bases I believe, and are far too powerful.

Anyway.

No open thread yet... and wanted to run this by you. Would you consider using it for your blog:

Flattr
BBC article
 
Google replaced Microsoft as the evil empire a long time ago as far as I am concerned. After all they know an awful lot more about me than Microsoft ever did. On the plus side they are just a lot nicer to us their humble underlings than Microsoft was and at least they don't charge us money for the privilege of serving them!
 
Do read, very interesting. Now to go find that kill Buzz switch.

LA TIMES - Buzz article
 
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