Google Buzz arrived in our Gmail accounts this week. I must say i’m not a fan of this thing. I like Gmail because it has a fairly good spam filter and because i can easily filter and categorize my mail. My email is very important to me so i like to keep it organized and i’m very careful to whom i give my email address because i really don’t like to get all kind of stupid emails.
Now that Google Buzz is here the quiet little place that my Gmail account was is no more. I’m getting followed some people with whom i communicated god knows when and how. But yes they are in my contacts, i’m in their contacts and Google wants to make us friends.
Let’s make it clear:
1) I’m not friends with fellows i changed an email or two ages ago. Maybe i don’t even want to communicate with them and especially i don’t want my address to be suggested to them.
2) I don’t like things forced on me. And this is what Google does. It forces Google Buzz down on our throats. “Hey we have Google Buzz, here it is take it. Maybe you don’t like it but we will make you use it anyway”. The don’t be evil mantra is gone forever.
If Google wanted to take market share from Facebook or Twitter they should have launched a standalone service and who wanted to use it would have used it. Oh but i forgot they do have Orkut. But i also forgot that Orkut sucks, as generally Google suck at social apps. So if they can’t make us use it on our own they are forcing us.
Thanks but no thanks. So for those who came here for the title of the post: You can turn off Google Buzz from the footer links in Gmail. There is a “turn off buzz” link right above the “Privacy Policy” (good position, it must be Murphy’s working).
Laszlo Bodor
