February 15, 2010
Anger Leads to Apology From Google About Buzz
By MIGUEL HELFT
Google moved quickly over the weekend to try to contain mounting criticism of Buzz, its social network, apologizing to users for features that were widely seen as endangering privacy and announcing product changes to address those concerns.
Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, wrote in a blog post on Saturday that Google had decided to alter one of the most-criticized features in Buzz: the ready-made circle of friends the service provided to new users based on their most frequent e-mail and chat contacts in Gmail. Instead of automatically connecting people, Buzz will in the future merely suggest to new users a group of people they may want to follow or be followed by, he said.
“We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback,” Mr. Jackson wrote. “We’ll continue to do so.”
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said his organization still intended to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission this week pending its review of Google’s changes.
“Even with these changes, there is still the concern that Gmail users are being driven into a social networking service that they didn’t sign up for,” Mr. Rotenberg said in an interview on Sunday.
Google also said that it would create a new Buzz tab in Gmail’s settings page to allow users to hide Buzz from Gmail completely. The page gives users the option to disable Buzz, deleting their posts and removing their Google profile, which in many cases listed publicly their circle of contacts in Buzz. The new feature could address concerns that disabling Buzz and removing a public profile was a multistep process that confused many users and that some described as a game of whack-a-mole.
In the next two weeks, existing Buzz users will be directed to the new start-up process to give them a “second chance to review and confirm” the people they are following, Mr. Jackson said.
The changes Google announced on Saturday will be carried out in the next few days.
Marc Rotenberg, go for it.
That was an astoundingly coarse thing to do to people who agreed only to use the Gmail product, in exchange for Google putting unobtrusive ads on part of the screen.
Google has the gall to criticize Chinese hackers while pulling this stunt.
That Jackson head should have rolled over the weekend, within hours of the offensive product roll-out. Nothing short of that would convince me Google has the proper upward slope to the learning curve.
What Google did is inexcusible. I hope the FTC has the courage to handle this thing appropriately, because otherwise it will show the federal government indifferent to consumer abuse by megabuck corporations. Google needs to backtrack, and the government needs to show a bit of credibility too.
_________UPDATE_______
Same story, an ocean away, the BBC, here.
I like Marc Rotenberg the more I read of his analysis. From the west coast, here, same story, more emerging detail:
Now Google is planning further updates. It's also going to change how it tests new features, Google product manager Todd Jackson said in an interview Monday.
"We didn't get things right in the beginning. We are working extremely hard to fix that," Jackson said. "We are going to continue working and making the product better as fast as we possibly can."
The mea culpa did not pacify privacy watchdogs who contended that this was yet another example of online companies playing fast and loose with consumers' private information. The Electronic Privacy Information Center said it would still file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday. Executive Director Marc Rotenberg is calling on the FTC to take more aggressive action to protect consumer privacy.
"The bottom line is that self-regulation is not working," Rotenberg said. "Google pushes the envelope, people scream and they dial back the service until the screaming subsides."
Rotenberg nailed that.
The clear Google message, "F*** you very much, we "dial it back" a bit, that's a bone thrown to you dogs, now go away, we know best.
That is precisely why that arrogant bastard Jackson needs to be fired to preserve even token credibility.
Moreover, the "whack-a-mole" characterizing of the required disabling effort built in at product launch also is spot on point, and speaks very loudly about the arrogance and deceit that needs to be fired.
I trust the firm far, far less after their sweet tiny Valentine.
There's a lesson for all in this.