As expected from a controversial web service that inflicts privacy invasion, Google Buzz just received a new “friend” in the Canadian Office of the Privacy Commissioner. A spokesperson for the said Canadian government office said that they are now investigating whether Google Buzz is indeed violating or may have violated Canadian privacy laws . Google’s Canada office currently talking with federal and provincial privacy officials to address these concerns and assured everyone of us that they are moving to implement changes as quick as they can. In fact more changes will be announced this week to ensure that Google Buzz is not violating and will not violate privacy laws. “We’ll be making some significant product improvements over the next few days based on user feedback,” Google Canada’s spokeperson Wendy Rozeluk said. In case you’ve been monitoring Canadian internet scene, the same Canadian office recently questioned Facebook’s policies for violating the country’s privacy laws. Facebook was forced to make drastic changes to its policy as a result of the investigation. Another issue which recently made some headlines was when the same office questioned Google Docs for possible violation of privacy laws. Let’s see if Google will finally end all questions raised regarding Buzz’s threat to user privacy and whether its actions would be enough not to merit another investigation, this time none other than the U.S. government. Like This Post? You'll LOVE These Related Tutorials from SEJ : Google Adds Privacy Link to Home
Tag Archives: Google Buzz
Google Answers Some Buzz Kills that We Buzzed Out
The Google Buzz folks must have heard or read all the noise about Buzz kills that they are now answering some of these. So Google announced three tweaks that it hopes to address some of the major concerns of the millions of Gmail users who jumped into the buzz hype.
First of these tweaks is about auto-following. So instead of making you automatically follow people in your Gmail contacts, Google will instead give you a chance to select only those you want to follow. But this is true only for first time “buzzers.’
For the rest of us who are using buzz right now and have automatically followed all our Gmail contacts, Google will be back-rolling this feature to give us a second chance to review and unfollow people that we are already following.
Then Google is also cutting the Picasa Web Albums and Google Reader connection to Google Buzz. This is one of the buzz kills I mentioned in my previous post. It’s a good thing that Google is responding to this concern as I don’t want to clutter up my already cluttered Google Reader account with feeds from blogs that I did not subscribe to.
Finally, Google has also added a Buzz tab to Gmail Setting. This means you cannow hide Buzz from Gmail or disable it completely.
So there. Some more tweaks that you want Google to do with Google Buzz?
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Google Answers Some Buzz Kills that We Buzzed Out
Google Quickly Refines GBuzz as Millions Start Buzzing
Much as I don’t want to get excited about this, I’m afraid that my initial impressions of Google Buzz may have been confirmed. According to the Gmail Blog, more than 9 million posts and comments have been created as millions started to jump into the latest social craze two days after it was launched. Looks like Google made a hit with Google Buzz.
The Google folks must be smiling right now as they might have really done something good in Google Buzz. But then, since this is primarily a Gmail add-on, the statistics is not really surprising. Gmail users are automatically signed into Buzz when it was rolled out. It was not an opt-in feature after all.
What Google should probably be taking note of is the fact that the Google Buzz mobile web app was able to generate 200 buzz per minute. Now, that’s quite an achievement.
And to think that we’ve been hearing so many negative feedback about it. In fact, the feedback are so urgent that Google quickly rolled out some refinements to GBuzz.
These refinements include:
- More visible option to not show followers/people you follow on your public profile
- Ability to block anyone who starts following you
- More clarity on which of your followers/people you follow can appear on your public profile
These are of course in direct answer to the most commented negative feature of Google Buzz pertaining to user privacy.
So, what do you think? Is Google Buzz a hit or a miss? Too early to tell? Or you just don’t care at all?
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Google Quickly Refines GBuzz as Millions Start Buzzing

