201–210 of 287 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then all your privacy concerns quickly disappeared!
It's a public thread. You'd rather the dev's ignore what people say about their product on an open discussion?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are certain that this was absolutely predictable, you are implying either: a) The Google Buzz people are so stupid that they couldn't have predicted this absolutely predictable thing (no one else did that I know of until it bit them) or b) they knew this would happen and chose to allow it to happen in the bad times hoping the love they'd get from those who like it would be greater than the pain experienced by…
So you say that a team of engineers does not understand that most frequent contacts != those whom I wish to share my stuff with? Are edge cases like the original post hard to predict? Did they do any testing, even with their friends/colleagues? That doesn't sound smart to me. Either their incentives are misaligned (b) or there are some other problems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I pointed out two months ago, this quote is taken out of context [1]. I'll reproduce the full quote here: Judgment matters... If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place... If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we…
Even taken in context that statement is still very scary. He's not saying you should use judgment on what search engine to use, he's saying you should use judgment on the action alone. The fact that he watered the statement down right after and then pulled the old "we're just following the law" doesn't make it any better.
Don't mistake my position; my only contention here is that Schimdt's quote is taken out of context. It is poor evidence of Google's stance on privacy. Let's use strong evidence like the mishandling of Buzz to make our case against Google.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the benefits? Why couldn't they just have a lightbox appear that says, "Yay! We've invented google buzz, here's a list of people we gathered from your frequent contacts in gmail. Click the check boxes by the people you want to include in your inner circle, or click here to disable Google Buzz."
The lightbox: the new modal dialog. "User! Answer this question! Now!" Our user generally doesn't really care about your new feature if they're logging in to check mail; they want to--wait for it-- check their mail . Just like users everywhere, they're just going to click on a random button and not even be able to tell you five seconds later whether it said "Go Away" or "Reveal My Location To My Abusive Ex-Husband An…
http://mashable.com/2010/01/10/facebook-founder-on-privacy/#...
This is the sort of thing that was absolutely predictable.
If you are certain that this was absolutely predictable, you are implying either: a) The Google Buzz people are so stupid that they couldn't have predicted this absolutely predictable thing (no one else did that I know of until it bit them) or b) they knew this would happen and chose to allow it to happen in the bad times hoping the love they'd get from those who like it would be greater than the pain experienced by…
A lot of startups do that and most of the time they're fine because they can learn as their user base grows. But Google made a strategic decision to bind Buzz to Gmail and that is what caused the problem.
The lesson is that a lot of people are thoughtless when building technology but once you get to the size of Google you can no longer afford to be as lax as everyone else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are certain that this was absolutely predictable, you are implying either: a) The Google Buzz people are so stupid that they couldn't have predicted this absolutely predictable thing (no one else did that I know of until it bit them) or b) they knew this would happen and chose to allow it to happen in the bad times hoping the love they'd get from those who like it would be greater than the pain experienced by…
(b) is almost certain. I have trouble believing no one at Google thought, "I have people in my email contacts I don't want to share with on Buzz." They probably thought that these cases would be in a tiny minority, and that they could respond to complaints with pointers for how to block people.
Google had the decision to jump-start their social network in a big way at a cost of annoying maybe 1 in 100 gmail users who are conscious about this sort of thing. Seems like an obvious decision to a for-profit company.
It raises questions in my mind about what data I am providing to Google and what unforeseen ways they may decide to use that data at some future point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In both cases, they clicked "No thanks, take me to my inbox" instead of the button to "Check out Buzz", and in both cases, Buzz was enabled anyways That's exactly what happened to me. I'm really pissed off with Google now. If they are going to throw this sort of crap at me, I will have to reconsider whether I want gmail and reader accounts.
Clicking "No thanks" in this instance is not a command to disable buzz it is actually a dismissal of the tutorial page. Buzz will still be enabled either choice you make. There should be an obvious opt out of buzz on the splash screen page. The way to turn it off is a very small textual link in the footer of the page that says turn off buzz.
They make no money protecting ones' privacy. If you can work your privacy into their business model, you'll have gained something. Good luck with that, though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where is it?
You can turn Buzz off on the bottom of your gmail page and privacy settings can be found at https://www.google.com/accounts/ though I still found it awkward and unintuitive really.
Thanks Google, for storing someone else's credit card for someone else's services on my account, for no reason I can find, other than the obvious 'I didn't realize what account I was signed in with', which seems unlikely because their Google Apps account was created before I ever started working there.
Man, Google's getting more and more confusing. It's a giant labyrinthine maze of data that only they have the time and processing power to sort through.