Google launched Google Buzz way back on Tuesday, and since then it’s been spreading around the Internet with blinding speed. All the blogs now have these “Follow us on Google Buzz!” banners, touting its “Inbox Integration” and adding little “Buzz This!” buttons next to their “Tweet This!” and “Facebook The Hell Out Of This Shit!” buttons.
Very quickly, though, privacy concerns started popping up all over the place. Google Buzz was on by default and tightly integrated with GMail. Google viewed this as a big bonus:
You have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most.
Somehow, it didn’t occur to Google that email is a private space, and that not everybody is “friends” with the people they email the most. More importantly, people email their lawyers, confidential sources, exes, doctors, etc. Amazingly, Google didn’t think it would be a problem to seed a social network with these contacts.
A scary example of the consequences:
I use my private Gmail account to email my boyfriend and my mother. There’s a BIG drop-off between them and my other “most frequent” contacts. You know who my third most frequent contact is. My abusive ex-husband.
Which is why it’s SO EXCITING, Google, that you AUTOMATICALLY allowed all my most frequent contacts access to my Reader, including all the comments I’ve made on Reader items, usually shared with my boyfriend, who I had NO REASON to hide my current location or workplace from, and never did.
The Times goes into more detail about the specific issues and Google’s reaction, alternately “it’s not a big deal” and “we’re working on it.” They’ve addressed some of the issues, but not to many critics’ satisfaction.
Google has a history of being tone-deaf to privacy concerns. When they first launched GMail, it didn’t have a delete button. They figured with all the storage they were giving you, there would no longer be a reason to ever delete an email. Why not just keep everything? Of course, actual humans delete emails for reasons other than lack of storage—they delete embarrassing emails, incriminating emails, spam, etc. Google didn’t think people would mind having a permanent archive of their mail on servers they didn’t control with no way to get rid of anything.
Shockingly, this turned out to be wrong.
Google is the biggest media company in the world, and well on its way to becoming one of the biggest companies in the world, period, yet they still see themselves as a benevolent little startup that everyone trusts implicitly. They get a ton of mileage out of their “Don’t Be Evil” slogan, and the Google Buzz situation is more evidence of how much they actually believe it.
The problem is that Google applies this slogan internally to their intentions and their plans, and is often blind to the possible results in real world. The founders are so dedicated to changing the world, that they spend little time worrying about whether the world wants to be changed. Google does have good intentions, to a fault.
They release things before they’re ready and tinker as they go because that’s what they’ve always done, but they’re not able to see that holding so much personal and private information about so many millions of people makes this a very dangerous strategy. Slapping “beta” on a product can no longer absolve them of responsibility anymore than Toyota could have gotten away with calling their braking system a beta.
Google’s products have massive and serious real-world implications for millions of people all over the world. Sorry guys, but it’s time to grow up.
UPDATE: In the comments, Paul Constant points to a good CNET article on the steps you need to take to get yourself out of Google Buzz.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Why people think they have any say in something they don’t pay for (gmail) is beyond me.
And shouldn’t “Sorry guys, but it’s time to grow up.” be directed at the consumers of this technology?
@1, 2 – No. Free is irrelevant. This is no different than if Microsoft released a new version of Outlook that posted your most frequently used contacts to the web without asking. Are you really arguing that this falls under “buyer beware”?
Millions of people have been using GMail for their private correspondence for years. They have a reasonable expectation that it won’t change one day and start sharing their info without consent.
Sure, you can argue that if you didn’t want this to happen, you should have stayed off the Internet to begin with, but that’s silly.
Good points, Anthony.
Although, I do have to say: I erase exes and people I know I don’t want to talk to from my contacts. I would rather not ever accidentally e-mail them by just hitting “enter” automatically sometime when autocomplete pulls their names up. Everyone should go through their e-mail contacts once in a while and do that, just to be safe. At the very least, less drama will result.
The real point of this post seems to be that Google is often blind to what people actually want, and how people actually use these products on a daily basis, not whether web email is inherantly private or the property of the host. The ‘can’t hide behind their catchy slogan’ comment wraps it up perfectly. The honeymoon is over. Are you ready for a long term relationship, Google? If not, I’ll head back to Yahoo.
No privacy for e-mails? Fuck ’em. Goodbye Gmail.
If you go to the bottom of yr Gmail Inbox, you’ll see it in teeny tiny type: “turn off buzz”. I clicked it.
I’m with @1 and @2. Google is a business seeking to make money. Facebook and Twitter are competitors and Google is evolving to meet the market and not lose share.
I’m not saying the default settings were right but to expect a company to not change something, especially something they aren’t contracted or obligated to provide, is silly.
@7: You have to do more than that. You just put Buzz to sleep, but you’re still out there and people can still find you. As CNet reported, It’s way more complicated to turn it off than hitting one button.
@8 – It’s not about expecting them not to change something, it’s about expecting them to understand their own products and how people use them, and think through the implications of their new ideas, instead of hiding behind their good intentions.
Google’s products have become part of the infrastructure of the Internet. I would argue this does give them some responsibility beyond their EULAs.
@4 – Good advice. Of course, I could have a lot of contacts I don’t want to delete but also don’t want public. Doctors, lawyers, etc. The (still hypothetical, as far as we know) examples of the Chinese or Iranian governments using Buzz as a way to easily trace dissident networks is a good example of how damaging this could be.
The problem with the “buyer beware” analogy is that Google has changed the rules out from under us. That’s different from boyer beware. Buzz means a fundamentally different Gmail than the one people signed up for. People would have operated their Gmail differently if they’d known they were going to do this.
I hardly use my Gmail except for one purpose, so I only ended up with one follower, my wife. But I have friends who ended up with dozens and dozens of followers they don’t even KNOW, people who have emailed them at some point in the past out of the blue. I have no doubt that there are many violent exes with criminal intent, and many stalkers, out there who are now magically “followers” of their victims. Sweet.
Another failure of Google’s attitude towards privacy was their insistence on mapping (with Street View) a domestic violence shelter I do work for. I was finally able to get it removed from their records after about a million complaints and removal postcards. I fully expect to see it back on a recurring basis, every year or two. They just don’t give a shit that they’re putting lives at risk.
Hey, it’s even better than that! It automatically starts sending out Buzzes everytime you do anything in your Picasa account! And it automatically starts sending out Buzzes everytime you modify one of your Google Docs! And it has also automatically subscribed me to a bunch of websites I’ve never heard of in something called Google Friend Connect!
And best of all it automatically shares the five Google-related websites (Blogger blogs, for instance) that I view the most! With no way to delete from the list, only add to it! Super! Neato!
I can’t IMAGINE why ANYONE would want to conceal some of the websites they visit (coming-out-gay blogs, living-with-AIDS blogs, living-with-depression blogs, thinking-about-leaving-the-church blogs, etc. etc. etc.).
I like that google had to come up with a plural for ‘buzz’.
It’s buzz. “I just received two buzz.”
Buzzes sounds equally awful, but multiple buzz, really?
The management and employees of Google, Apple, FourSquare, Facebook, and Twitter (along with whatever is next) are dominated by very young, sheltered, male engineering geeks who just don’t have the life experiences to understand why any of this is a problem.
Why wouldn’t anyone want to:
Broadcast their location and who they are with at all times? Let the whole world know they left their home unoccupied for the next three hours while at a movie? Announce to your boss you have personal or medical issues or political views that have no bearing on work?
Haven’t any of them at least encountered a devious colleague who will sabotage them at school or work?
@11: The thing about Street View is it shows things that anyone could see driving by. I fear expecting people not to find out about something that’s in plain view on a public street is probably wishful thinking, and could be leading you to a false sense of security. Security through obscurity doesn’t really work.
Would it really be so fucking hard for a popular media company/ social network / email service to be known for protecting privacy really well? You’d think there’d be a market for that, so many people have been frustrated with google, facebook, myspace etc for disrespecting our desire for privacy and rights to personal info
@16: Most ISPs and domain registrars offer email services without any fancy social networking features. The best way to protect your privacy is to not join a social networking site, because really, sharing info is what they’re there for.
Actually, I highly recommend buying a domain name and setting up your own email address on it. It’s not that hard or expensive these days, and you’ll never have to change your address, no matter how your internet service changes.
@16- As long as people expect something for nothing on the web, and internet companies have to make money somehow selling personal info will be the standard business model for web businesses.
Todd Johnson is the product manager at Google in charge of this brilliant scheme. Feel free to invade his privacy.
er.. Todd Jackson
#19/20: Everyone should click the “report abuse” button on his profile for violating google’s community standards.
“Private and Confidential Information
We don’t allow unauthorized publishing of people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, Social Security Numbers, driver’s and other license numbers, or any other information that is not publicly accessible. To protect your own privacy and your confidential information, be careful not to share any private or confidential information with others.”
Question: I haven’t used Buzz and I have no interest in using it. Do I need to do anything about it then? If I do need to do something, what exactly is that? Thanks.
Our friends at the NSA must have strong mixed emotions about all this.
On one hand, there must be some anxiety over the (extremely remote) possibility that Google’s “whatevs” reaction to having spilled the beans might spur citizen agitation that leads to a new wave of electronic privacy legislation.
But in the main Fort Meade’s probably in a state of delicious suspense, running office pools on how soon we nod back to sleep even after this wake-up kick.
Hotmail rulez!
@22 – If you use GMail, read this CNET article about how to thoroughly opt-out of Google Buzz.
I remember similar user outrage after Facebook introduced the News Feed. Granted, Facebook doesn’t automatically grant permission to everyone in your Email contacts. Still, it was interesting to see people get so upset that the changes to their profile were now broadcast to their “friends” — even though a dedicated Facebook stalker would have noticed the changes without the help.
In response to the scary situation involving Reader items and an abusive ex: I ran a small test with my Reader, and privacy settings in Reader seem to carry over into Buzz. If the ex could suddenly read them in Buzz, he probably already had permission to read them in Reader. (I can’t verify that this was the case when Buzz launched, as the privacy settings have been updated.) The author in question has an updated post, but I can’t read it because her blog is now private.
There are legitimate privacy concerns here. I just don’t think that they extend to information that is voluntarily shared. Involuntary posting of your contacts, for example, is not alright. http://lifehacker.com/5470513/how-buzz-e…
Update your privacy settings. Treat all electronic communication as public. Legislation would be nice and comforting (and you could probably legislate that default settings be set to private in all cases), but nothing is ever 100% secure.
Many companies block access to Facebook, Twitter, etc. Those same companies will now block access to Buzz, which by necessity means blocking all access to Gmail. How many people will continue using Gmail if they can’t access it at work?
Man, I would love to be a fly on the wall for the ass-kicking that Buzz product management is undoubtedly getting at Google.
Oh, and by “many companies,” I mean 54 percent of them.
@15, yes, I understand how Street View works. But the shelter I’m talking about just looks like an apartment building. It’s not very helpful to have a big ol’ pushpin there saying “yo, here it is, DV shelter, your bitch of a wife is in here”. Note that they get calls EVERY DAMN DAY from dudes looking to track down their wives.
Auto-follow dropped. , Picasa and GReader are now opt-in, and it’s easier to disable Buzz from Gmail settings.
Too late?
Just recently people were very upset with the changes to Facebook which seemed like no big deal to me and actually made it easier to read about stuff that friends are doing. If they wanted it private they could make it private.
This however is a whole new big fat hairy issue. Wow. Thankfully I keep two emails and two Facebook accounts. Most people understand to separate business and pleasure on Facebook but who would have thought on Gmail. I got lucky but others were not so lucky.
I smell a class action lawsuit. Any lawyers wanna make some easy money?
I wonder how much focus group and user testing Google actually did on this? Doesn’t seem like much.