How do you not see this coming with a feature like Buzz? Why didn't they do any sort of staged roll-out or opt-in for a feature with such obvious privacy implications? I'm stunned. Doesn't Google employ tons of lawyers, ethics experts, or people with enough common sense to spot this?
Maybe it was some sort of skunk-works project that got out without sufficient oversight?
Google employs a lot of smart people, so this is a real failure on their part - probably the biggest that I've yet seen from them. All previous similar addons to gmail have been opt in, so I wonder what caused them to change that policy in this case.
but it's /stupid/ to piss away the goodwill of nerds, and there is a rather large subset of the nerd population that is freakishly concerned about privacy. If you want to do business with nerds, you need to respect that.
Google, I think, did a very good job of building trust and enthusiasm with nerds; it's super important for them, we are the influencers here. Sure, nerds never click on ads, but who do you think sets up the computer for the confused normals who do?
The number of nerds I know who hate google to the point of using inferior search engines is growing over time.
Maybe it was some sort of skunk-works project that got out without sufficient oversight?