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This makes me think: what should Google do to recover from this? People are angry, they feel violated and betrayed. It's a public relations disaster. My opinio
by olliesaunders 17y ago
This makes me think: what should Google do to recover from this? People are angry, they feel violated and betrayed. It's a public relations disaster.
My opinion is that Google needs to draw a line under this whole issue. They need to hold up their hands say "you know what, we didn't realize what we were doing here but we get it now, this was wrong, we're sorry." And within hours of making that statement, pull the whole product off the Internet, and send massive bunches of flowers to the people worst and most publicly affected by the fiasco. In the end, Google is a company with a huge amount of our personal data who's success depends on us trusting them with that data. The precariousness of Google's possession of personal data is debated routinely. And so far a lot of those discussions conclude with someone citing their motto and impeccable past records (the China thing was awesome too). What now? Now, that record has been tarnished. At what cost should that record be maintained? I think killing off Buzz is a small price.
Google really needs to show everyone how seriously it takes people's privacy. I hope they don't miss this opportunity to demonstrate that.
- robotron 17y agoWho is angry? I'm not. They need to fix the privacy issues but not pull the whole thing.
- faragon 17y agoWell, I am. I'm willing to stop using gmail if Google doesn't step back.
- hexis 17y agoI'm already making medium-term plans to run my own mail server.
- pasbesoin 17y agoAlso, someone started a thread here to discuss alternatives. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1121269 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1121269
- robotron 17y agoWhy not just disable it? It's not difficult.
- faragon 17y agoI removed the "auto-added" things, then switched off "buzz"... but I got many "followers" after that (Buzz can be hidden but not disabled!). It was crazy to see conversations of people I know speaking with others... GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU FUCKING BUZZ!
- c1sc0 17y agoI'm also not angry. I actually think it's quite an interesting situation: let's see how agile Google still is.
- sgk284 17y agoI am entirely okay with everything they've done. People need to stop overreacting. They hand held me through the whole Buzz process and all of the defaults were great. All of my non-technical friends also love it. They made it very easy for us to connect and chose settings that work for most people. The key thing is though that if you don't like Buzz, don't use it. If you don't like Google Profiles, don't make one.
- geeksam 17y agoDid you happen to see this item, in which a woman's sensitive data was automagically provided to her abusive ex-husband? http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/fuck-you-google/ http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/fuck-you-google/
- jrockway 17y agoHer most frequent contact was provided with a list of her public blog posts? OH NOES.
- alain94040 17y agoAgreed. They have a small window of opportunity to survive googlegate (or should we call it buzzgate). Based on their first post on the blog, it looks like they chose the "duck in the sand" approach, classic PR non-speak: ignore the issue, sidetrack it, ridicule it. That's what 99.9% of corporations will do. Again, they have another 24 hours to do something completely different and acknowledge the problem head-on. It will hurt for a week, but they'll be much better off long-term. Will they have the class and the guts to go for it? I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]