So, does this prevent people from following me after I go through these steps? Or will I have to periodically purge everything again?<p>On a side note, as I was purging my lists today, I found that Picasa had magically been re-added to the list of my shared sites after I explicitly removed it yesterday morning. What is going on here?
Wait...you mean 'Turn Off Buzz', doesn't really turn off Buzz!<p>Aaarrrgh!<p>That's the last time I 'try out' a Google product. From now on I test their crap on a junk account that I'll create in GMail.<p>Thanks a lot Google...<p>No...not really.<p>Jack@$$es!
As a Google fan boy, this pains me to say this. I had to turn it off :( After everyone connected their twitter, blog, google reader feeds it became the same useless jargon as everywhere else. I'll come back around to it after they change things up.
This Buzz things gives me some insight what it must feel like to be an average user; I have NFI (still!) what my Buzz status is. Is it on or off? Do I have followers? etc<p>I'm even more confused as I read more, because it's inconsistent with what I'm seeing, and the reports from other people are inconsistent with each other, making me think there's perhaps some A/B testing going on<p>[Edit: figured it out. Buzz was enabled for both myself and my wife. I'm pretty cross about this. To me it's a flagrant breach of trust. Imagine what would happen if Apple or Microsoft pulled a stunt like this]
This whole debacle is completely ridiculous, mainly because it's so confusing. I won't go into all the inconsistencies and weird privacy policy interplay issues that are going on, as others have, but I'll say this:<p>If I can't pound ten beers in an hour and still understand your privacy policy, it's too complicated.
I don't really see what the big deal is.<p>I'm going to leave it enabled. I'm aware that it's public, and I'll just make sure to treat it as such. It seems unlikely that I'll publish any content other than syndicating my Twitter feed (much like LinkedIn), and all of that information is public already.<p>My life on the web is open to everyone, and that paradigm isn't going anywhere.
Can anyone confirm that blocking everybody like the article advises can be done, erm, subtly? I'd rather not have my mom, sister, and best friend get a message saying I blocked them. OTOH I am supremely annoyed that suddenly I'm part of Google's dumb social network (I am one of those avoid-Facebook-Myspace-etc.-at-all-costs people.)
It might not be obvious but I found that even though my profile is not "public", visitors who stumbled upon my Google Profile page could see who I was following / who was following me.<p>In the Edit Profile section, looks like "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me" is enabled by default.
Holy shit. I can't believe Buzz is on for me. I've explicitly declined activating it when asked. Now I'm seeing people following me. WTF, Google, can you take NO for answer?
Silly article, IMHO. Main reason: if you are really caught up in the privacy issue, don't use Google (signed in), Facebook, etc. Also, strongly control what cookies you want to allow.<p>To me it is a value proposition: what are the advantages of a service vs. disadvantages like privacy issues. I choose to use most of Google's services, occasionally use Facebook, and I am sort-of addicted to following people who I consider to be "thought leaders" on Twitter.<p>Also, my early take on Buzz: it is OK, but I have an attitude that I don't have to read everything that shows up on my Buzz list. Same as Twitter.<p>I have also started to sometimes do short tweets on Twitter, and maybe following up with something more detailed on Buzz.