Google admits Buzz social network testing flaws | Hacker News Reader

Google admits Buzz social network testing flaws

news.bbc.co.uk

I suspect it was rushed out when someone actually paniced about "the competition". There's rumors Facebook is starting it's own e-mail service and the social network just scaled back it's ad relationship with Microsoft. It is clearly growing competition and has 400 million+ users compared to Gmail's 120 million+ (I believe those figures are roughly right).

It is feasible Google did this on purpose too. I can't remember where I read the article, but it suggested this was an expected reaction to Buzz and the fallout was worth dealing with due to the free promotion Buzz got from it. Kind of like the car recall offset against potential deaths/lawsuits caused by faulty parts scenarios. Put simply: it was worth the bad press to get Buzz integrated into millions of accounts now.

Buzz is here to stay whether we like it or not. What's worrying is Google were prepared to push this out to millions based on the feedback of 20,000 Google staff.

Something about Facebook offering an email service strikes me as a new take on Aol.

Trust is expensive. Too expensive to spend on the hopes of finding some free publicity, especially from a company that owns it's own advertisement network and can advertise its' own products whenever it feels like it.

I have a hard time believing that this was intentional on Googles' part.

"It is feasible Google did this on purpose too."

Hey, if they're gonna keep up with Facebook, they got to catch up with Facebook's disregard for their user's privacy.

Considering how slow Google has rolled out products in the past, and how pervasive and invasive Buzz is, the way this was rolled out is really, truly surprising.

I'm glad that Google is at least apologetic about it all. It doesn't fix the problem, but not being assholes about a bad roll-out (Sony) is worth quite a lot to me.

Solving any problem starts with admitting there is one.

Are they being apologetic or did they have this planned from day-1? My theory is that they knew that this would be incredibly intrusive, but they did it this way anyways to get the necessary traction they needed to get a social product off the ground. Now that they have the exposure they need (since everyone checks gmail daily and they were on max invasion for a week) they can go back to being nice and apologetic to save their brand image.

Well played Googs.

That doesn't seem very likely.

I'm sure lots of people became active users after having Buzz thrust upon them, but lots of people also went out of their way to opt-out of the service (and are unlikely to return)

You know, I have a very similar attitude toward Facebook's Beacon. I figured, there's no way they didn't see it coming. In fact I can point to an article that did, in fact, see it coming, before it happened.

I never forgave Facebook, because I'm assuming their apology was disingenuous (and indeed they continue to do things that are disrespectful of their users, so I feel like I made a decent call). Boycotting Google is way harder, not sure what to think. Is this as bad as Beacon? Was it as obvious that it was going to blow up in their face?

I think that the difference here is that Google, publicly at least, says lots of the right things about privacy. They seem (again publicly) at least genuinely concerned about privacy. Whereas FB (and Zuckerberg in particular) has made many public statements about how annoying people's privacy is.

That's why I think Google's apology is coming from a sincere place, and the mistake was simply driven by an abundance of ambition and a lack of caution (cause by hopeless naivete). FB's apologies always rang hollow because we know Zuckerberg is tremendously aware of the issues (because he's informed of them in nearly every interview) and simply doesn't care.

And I should add, to your use of the word "publicly", I'll admit that there's no way to know what's in their hearts, but if they all at least behave as if they were sincere, it's all I could really ask for.

The BBC understands that Buzz was only tested internally and bypassed more extensive trials with external testers - used for many other Google services.

If true, this is really surprising, considering the tens of millions of gmail users who would be affected and the well-known problems faced by Facebook whenever it has opened up user information in new ways.

Of course, one of the first things they did was add a prominent "Send your feedback to Google!" link so customers could tell them exactly what they liked and disliked about the service.

Right?

I love Google products (can tell you how much I rely on them) but I'm afraid that I have already given up using this due to the way it was so carelessly rolled out. Without going into too much detail I have found that it has damaged some of the relationships between myself and some friends and extended family. They defiantly missed a few use cases in their analysis.

I can't figure out why Google didn't roll out Wave using this method and set something like Buzz as a opt-in.

As google gathers more and more of our information these types of blunders will get worse and worse. I think even a beta user would not want to have personal data exposed. Privacy features cannot be released in beta when it comes to a company like google.

What about using the word "subscribe" instead of "follow" in the user interface? Would that help somewhat in terms of privacy worries?

Nobody wants to be followed around, but people subscribing to your posts sounds great.

Please don't give Google any ideas. I'm still mad they're calling tags "labels".

Using well known terminology helps people understand the metaphor. I also think "follow" is for social interactions whereas "subscribe" fits better into a publishing metaphor.

Oh, YOU are mad?

Downvoter: there's a little more context here.

I'm not the down-voter, but I've found your remark and your edit completely pointless and incomprehensible. Perhaps they mean something to you, perhaps they mean something to some others, but to me, and possibly to the majority of readers here, they're cryptic, content-free, and add nothing to the value of HN.

Your profile gives hints as to what the "context" might be, but perhaps if you gave complete, clear and coherent comments you would be more effective at putting your point, regardless of whether you care about karma.

Explaining the joke would have been far less funny. Context is everything.

I didn't get it at first either. I think if you explain the context is in your profile, more people might understand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com