When I opened my Gmail this evening, I had a new applet called "Buzz", which on cursory glance seemed to be some sort of Twitter imitation.

I did not ask anybody to install software on my computer, and in fact I take a very dim view of companies who do so without my permission.

In very small print at the bottom of the Gmail page is a reference to "Disable Buzz" and doing so did make the Buzz icon go away. However, the software is still installed, adding still more clutter to my system. I sent a not-too-subtle note to Google expressing my displeasure.

Am I over-reacting?

tanstaafl.

What software did you get installed ? I said ok to it and they just added the buzz button in my gmail I didn't get anything installed on the computer.

Whatever software it is that runs that whole Buzz business. They never asked me if I wanted it, I had no opportunity to say OK. (I wouldn't have!)

tanstaafl.

You mean there was a new link on the Gmail web page?

No software is involved on your side. It is all done on Google's servers so if you turn it off then it doesn't affect you at all.

Sorry, but yes. If you've disabled it, then you're effectively exactly where you were before.

Google updates GMail just like any other website gets updated. It's not software, it's just a website, and nothing has changed on your computer.

And Google updates GMail all the time with new features. GMail today has much more functionality than GMail five years ago. They just aren't usually huge additions (for better or worse) like Buzz.

I just logged into my Gmail for the first time today and as soon as I logged in a full page came up asking me if I want to "Check out Buzz" or "No, go to my inbox".

If this didn't happen to you, it sounds like someone else is checking your email. Edit: maybe you were already logged in...

Anyways it's pretty humorous that you're getting indignant about this new feature being 'installed on your system'. I'm laughing with you not at you though. Don't panic -- it's just a new feature on the site!

I'll actually side with Doug a little bit here. True, it was able to be disabled, but what if it couldn't? Google is pushing forward with the web becoming "the computer", by running more and more "apps" online and pushing forward with projects like Chromium OS. HTML 5 and offline sites allow services like GMail to run offline and appear to be just like any other application locally installed.

People complain when the Facebook layout changes, because people have to relearn where everything is. And in the case of their new privacy settings, caused people to expose information to the public that used to be private. (Including their CEO).

So going forward, where exactly should the boundary be between what is considered "mine" and under my control, and what is not under my control?

</Devil's Advocate>

One suggestion Doug, if you want to keep a consistent interface into your e-mail on GMail, I'd recommend using an offline mail application that supports IMAP. Thunderbird is a free application from Mozilla for email, and it can log in to your GMail account. If you are away from your computer, you can still go to GMail.com and read everything.

Facebook qua puzzle can usually be solved by this algorithm, but the Facebook developers do seem to forget quite regularly that not all of their users will be happy doing that.


One view on the boundary -- a boundary on which the Facebook developers do keep grinding, on their oh-so-cool development skateboards -- is that it lies between services you pay for directly, and services that are funded by "monetizing" you in less direct ways such as via advertising.

Peter

That's a good point- you can log onto your GMail from anywhere to read your mail in the interface you are now familiar with.

Also, using an email client on your computer allows you to review your 'old' mail without connection to the internet- the mail is actually on your machine instead of on theirs.

So both cases are covered: Have internet, don't have your computer; and don't have internet, have your computer.

But...it could. And while the rest of what you said is a good debate to have, I was just addressing this one issue. And considering he was complaining about Google installing software on his computer without his permission when that is not at all what was happening, I felt I should answer his question honestly. Yes, he was over-reacting. That doesn't mean, though, that he doesn't have something to complain a bit about.

However, I haven't seen a huge change that Google has made to GMail so far that can't be disabled or ignored without any ill effect to the user. Same goes for Google Reader. In the past year they've added a whole bunch of social stuff to Google Reader, but I have it all turned off or tucked away, so it doesn't impact me in the least.

Believe me, I use Google services more than anything else on the web. If they changed major functionality on one of their web apps, I'd probably be pretty pissed off. But so far, all major changes are either positive ones that I don't want to get rid of (like hiding labels and menu items in GMail - love that!), or ones that I can simply ignore or remove.

As for the rest of your post, Tom, I have two things to address:

1) If you don't like a change that Google makes, unlike many/most other companies on the web, at least Google goes to great effort to let you take your data with you. You could easily get every piece of mail in GMail, and put it onto your computer. Granted, you'd lose the email address, but not your data.

2) True, he could keep things consistent by using Thunderbird. But I've noticed fairly drastic changes and additions to that software over the years, and I don't even use it personally. It's true, at least you get to decide when to upgrade, but most people will upgrade their software when it tells them they need it, particularly when bugs and security holes are found. Plus, I kinda hate the UI of Thunderbird.

True, and that's better for backup purposes, but technically you can get offline GMail through the normal interface. There's a menu item in settings that will let you sync most of your emails, or at least recent ones, to your computer. For now it uses Gears, but in the future I'm sure they'll use HTML5 persistent storage.

With GMail, if anyone has read my thread on the subject, you don't even need to use IMAP, because they've put in a hacked-up implementation of POP where you can get the same "benefits" - their server doesn't allow POP to delete messages and all mail sent via SMTP ends up in your INBOX, where it needs to be filtered back to your local "sent items" folder.

One big benefit of using a client-side piece of software is that you don't have to be treated to ads, nor do you have to have all your mail lumped into "conversations" aka threads if you don't want to.

Or you could just use AdBlock and realize that conversations are the greatest thing to come to email since spam filtering

Interesting point of comparison:

When Google made the transition from the "old" GMail interface to the "new" GMail interface, the changes were quite subtle, and they had a large chunk of time where you could "opt in" to the new interface, then they threw the big switch and let you "opt out" of it. In the end, I don't think there was much screaming about that transition.

For Buzz, Google's being somewhat less ceremonious about it, but then it's pretty easy to ignore buzz and just read your email as normal. If I were to add you to a buzz thread, perhaps by referencing you with their @-notation, then the thread would show up in your inbox like any other message, which you could then read and respond to. Or, you could "archive" or "delete" the thread and you'd never see it again.

Cleverly, all of this still kinda works via IMAP, at least from a read-only perspective. When the thread updates, the message bumps back up near the top of your message order. You can't use email replies, unlike FriendFeed and more recently Facebook, however you can hit the link at the bottom of the message which takes you to www.google.com/buzz/......

I actually think Buzz works just fine, but then I've drunk the Google Kool-Aid pretty thoroughly. I now find myself wondering when/if they'll integrate Google Wave in the same way they integrated Google Buzz. Or, maybe Google will provide third-party plugins so other parties (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) can integrate with Gmail the same way that Google Buzz does.

How, exactly, this sort of cross-service integration is ultimately going to be supposed (public-subscribe services? app plugins? third-party reflectors?) is going to be one of the big battles over the next few years.

If I want a threaded mail view I can have a threaded mail view. I've been able to do it since the mid-90's in all my email clients.

I generally don't like web email systems, and GMail is no different in that respect. It's slow compared to a native client and is inflexible as hell. Generally speaking, for me, Google is about Search. Everything else they do I think is pretty lack-lustre. And then , even their search has been somewhat shite in the past few years. But I suppose that depends on what you're searching for. I can't stand useless results and I wish they'd do a better job of filtering out obviously fake auto-generated and parked domain sites.

I don't drink anyone's Kool-Aid. Can't stand the stuff.

Sure. I'll wait for you to write some software that filters out all the spam and malware I get as well with a 100% detection rate and 0 false positives.

People who do SEO work out the loopholes in the filtering and ranking algorithms. Its easy for you to spot that its a fake site but making software that does it perfectly all the time without knocking out any real sites is hard. There have been plenty of lawsuits because Google and other search providers have altered their ranking system so somebody who used to be listed high on the page suddenly got dropped totally or lowered in the ranking.

The threaded view is really just a nice bonus. The core idea is that the microblogging paradigm is fundamentally different from traditional email and has more in common with the sort of threads that we host here on the empeg board.

You say something. Your friends see it. They respond and can see each other.

Which leads me to wonder when we're going to start seeing the integration/transmogrification of phpBB and friends into microblogging sources that integrate with everything else.

Nevermind whether I want my non-empeg friends stumbling into my musings over here and being able chime in. One of the strangest features of Facebook, to me, is watching friends of mine, who otherwise would never meet, get into arguments in the threads started by my Facebook posts.

It's the merging of consciousnesses and the dissipating of thought paradigms. The anti-Christ / 2012 / apocalypse / consciousness shift / age of aquarius / zombie attack is drawing near. We'll be fully integrated when we realize we're telepathic beings.

</hijack>

Re: Google filtering. They don't have to make it perfect. And they don't have to make it a default by actually removing sites from their index. They can make it an option you set, similar to the one they've already implemented to limit store pages in results. That way the filtering happens as it's generating the page of results for you personally.

Like searching for a term with the added "-bullshit" option.

hybrid8 -bullshit

Your search hybrid8 -bullshit did not match any documents.

Just kidding

BTW, I do know the pain of having your whole site drop from Google. I suffered this back in 2006 and it was horrendous. I probably should even be talking about it now, lest I should tempt fate. Knock on wood and all that.

Unless you work where I do and find the corporate firewall blocking all forms of email not run by the company.

In that case, Glenn, you should stop by my ranch on the 13th of March for some 20 yard gun fun and imagine the soda cans and other assorted targets to be the objects upon which your rancor is directed.

Seriously- this is an invitation.

More info here or on Facebook thusly

Doug's not over-reacting, but neither is Harriet. Wow, who would have thought that Google were such a clusterfuck? Too bad they didn't incorporate "Don't be Stupid" as an extension of their mantra.

Doug is over-reacting, in that he's complaining about software being installed on his computer when there was none.

Harriet, on the other hand, oh my god. I knew when I saw that "automatically following" thing something felt hinky; now I know why.

I just saw that, too. I went straight to gmail to see what settings could be set to control buzz and reader.
I tried to clamp down on everything- which was pretty simple because I don't do anything on google except gmail.
I was automatically following one person and had none following me (for better or for worse).

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in the next few days.

Bitt, you're correct in that some of the specifics/facts of the reason Doug is reacting aren't concrete, however I do think his reaction to the presence and activation of this feature is justified. Updating a UI and moving some things around is one thing, but this move is invasive. It shows complete thoughtlessness on Google's part. There's no valid case for an opt-out situation here. They've already got the ability to install options/expansion. This could have been posted as some landing page when you first logged in this week or sent as an email or even just included as a marked item on the page until you checked it out and dismissed it.

I'm happy to report that Buzz has not been added to the Google Apps private-branded version of GMail. This would have been an even greater disaster and I would have been livid if my customer support email system was going through their servers.

Looks like the story is out at the national level too.

NYTimes - Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service.

Really makes me glad I never made a big push to switch over to Google services with my own mail/contacts/calendar. I feel bad for the people I've recommended their services to. Clearly the outrage over their CEO's comments in December wasn't enough to make them think that the Buzz rollout was a bad idea.

Even worse, you can't opt out, unless you simply stop using Gmail. There is simply no way to turn it off.

Doug, I apologize. The specifics of your complaint were incorrect to the point that I dismissed any other elements of it. (In my defense, Buzz hadn't shown up on my Gmail account yet.) This is actually far more insidious that what you were complaining about.

You are correct, the specifics were specious. (Oh, isn't that a clever juxtaposition of words! ) But now that I know more about Buzz and what it is doing, not to my computer but to my privacy, I'd say that my reaction was not only justified, but considerably under-stated.

There's a pretty good article on CNET about how you can mitigate the Buzz damage (you can't get rid of Buzz entirely). This is going to turn into a public relations disaster comparable to the Sony rootkit fiasco.

I am re-thinking my unmitigated admiration for all things Google.

tanstaafl.

Dang'it!

Even though I declined Buzz when it's splash arrived during a gmail login, it still activated, and attached it's self to Picasa and Google Reader.

That Cnet artical tanstaafl pointed to has some decent cautions.

I was able to disable buzz without a lot of effort. I hadn't known the disable was in the gmail page footer. That is usually out of sight and out of mind.

So what are people going to find out about me because of this ? If I click on my buzz link it says I have one follower who I don't know but also happens to have the last name Saeger. So then I click on them and I get the message that says they haven't created a profile. Well I haven't made a profile so what are people going to get about me ?

I don't know how they decided to add that person I have contacts who have my last name and they nor any other contact got added.

Interesting. It looks like Google has made quite a few changes, and very much acknowledged that they didn't do things right.

I don't have that Buzz settings tab at all.

Interesting, neither do I. Perhaps they're rolling that out too? Seems odd to roll something like that out gradually...

From the article: (The Buzz tab isn't available yet, and they do say "we're adding", but hopefully it'll be there soon.)

tanstaafl.

Weren't people aware of Google invading privacy before this? I mean, their business model is based on data mining to better target ads. The only difference now is they are sharing all your stuff with the world instead of just internally or to their customers. I'm surprised people still believe that 'do no evil' thing.

There's a difference between data mining and aggregation and telling an ex-girlfriend* what I was up to at the weekend.

* = hypothetically.

Gizmodo: Google Admits Buzz Testing Sucked and They Are "Very, Very Sorry"

I followed the CNet article's recommendations and found them to be similar to what I had done on my own.

It's so weird that Google did this so bass-ackward. Don't they usually launch things as 'Beta' for months or years and there's always a definite 'opt in' method?
I mean, you need an invitation for their new services, usually, and any software they offer is definitely downloaded/installed/activated at the user's request.
So not like them.

Yahoo has been offering a social network ("Get updates on your friends!") for months and nobody has cared one iota. Nobody mentions it when they discuss social networking sites. It exists as a side panel on my yahoo mail page with no way to 'turn it off'. I don't participate, but I can't get rid of it, either. Oh well, it's a free service and if that's one of the ads I can't block then so be it. At least it isn't immediately and by default broadcasting my 'news' to the rest of my contact list.

I think Facebook has met the market need that MySpace didn't. They took the 'Classmates.com' concept and made it free and offered it to educated adults (at first), which garnered it a very sensible base population to start with. No frills and very little user customization. Then there's the games and apps (which I don't use) which add another dimension to the experience.

As for Twitter, I never followed any private blogs anyway, so 'micro-blogging' isn't part of my internet experience.
Call me old-fashioned.
*shrug*

Yeah, but they caught a lot of flak for doing that with Wave and not having enough users to make it usable.

A Slashdot article reviews the Buzz buzz and links the latest news on controls and settings and (yes!) disabling the service entirely.