All of this could have been avoided if they simply had a button that asked users if they wanted google to automagically add social contacts from gmail and give users a preview of what that would look like.

They should have also clearly indicated in the preview what was private and what was public.

BTW, what happened to their beta testing / invite only methodology? Also doesn't google beta test things internally first? If so, I'm sure they would have gotten very similar feedback from their 10,000+ employees.