Google admitted its Buzz service was not tested enough and they regret this

Google Buzz is a Gmail integrated service, launched February 9^th, that lets to people the possibility to post and share content, read and comment buddies’ posts etc.

Since their launch, Google was hardly criticized for personal information disclosure. If you are not so familiarized with this service, see what the deal is: Google Buzz friends’ circle creator makes public your list with most emailed persons unless you change your settings. That means Google allows others Buzz’ users to see to whom you email more often.

The decision was based on the idea of providing a greater user experience to people using that service, but it seems it was a bad step taken by the company while revealing maybe connections between journalist and “rats”, business people, even affairs with other women.

Google admitted that they have not done this the good way so improvements are to be done, but all that they wanted was to create an easily accessible social network for Gmail users. More than that, they also consider offering to people that do not use Gmail the option to join a separate from Gmail website.

As you might know, Google services are tested by Google Trusted Tester program, a network created by friends and families of employees that gain access to products before being launched and than send feedback to Google. It seems that Buzz was not tested by this program, the reasons being unknown.

A Google representative admitted that the company apologizes for making this step without a deeper testing of this service and also apologizes for the worry created about this issue.

We should keep an eye on Google’s next moves while those can decide if the Buzz will be a success or a failure in Google’s plans for a bigger piece of social networking.

Here are some fixes announced to be done in a short time:

-         Buzz will only make suggestions who could be a part from your friends’ circle

-         Easier way to disable Buzz

-         guarantee that accounts will not auto-connect with Picasa albums

-         guarantee that accounts will not auto-connect with items stored in Google Reader

-         an improved “preferences” menu

It seems that these improvements are up to be released this week, as the work involved in this issue is at higher levels.

Google Buzz to take on Facebook and other social networking sites?

Launch of Google Buzz announced

Google announce the launch of its social networking application called Google Buzz today. Buzz has all the familiar features users of Facebook, twitter and other social networking sites are familiar with such as the ability to post private or public status updates called twitts by Twitter and in the case of Google Buzz, you guess right “buzz”. You can share content from other sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Picassa.

Google Buzz integrates with Gmail, not quite clear whether a Gmail account is a prerequisite for signing up to Buzz, but the integration with Gmail automatically gives Buzz a 170 million user base, which is the current number of Gmail users worldwide at present.

So far, Buzz does not seem to have any killer features strong enough to make the 400 million or so Facebook users abandon Faceebook for Buzz but it is early days, lets see how Buzz develops. This is the second social networking platform Google has launched in the last six years. In 2004, it released Orkut which is quite popular in countries such as Brazil and India, never caught on in Western Europe and other places where Facebook is the the most popular social networking site.

Google has developed a number of services to rival popular services in the past including Google Video which was launched when YouTube became very popular, Google Video as not able to compete with YouTube, Google eventually bought YouTube and merged Google Video users into it.

You can discouss Google buzz a UK webmaster forum