Jules Jones

This morning is the first time that I've had both time and functioning brain since Google launched their shiny new "all your privacy are belong to us" service. I hadn't explicitly intended to do some slash and burn on the thing, but it was also the first time since then that I'd done my regular check round my various specialist Gmail accounts to see that they are running smoothly. Since I hadn't logged into the zine publisher account at all in the last couple of months, the first thing I'm greeted with there is the Buzz welcome splash screen.

It's *still* heavily slanted to making it as easy as possible to accept it and as hard as possible to escape from, although it's not as actively deceptive as it was. But what I find really, really annoying is that it won't tell me anything about how to use it (or not use it, as the case may be) unless I am either willing to sit through some @#$%^ing video, or do some digging to find the help text without having to watch the video first. What looks like it might be a link to non-video turns out to be a link to a page with some inane "look at the cool things you can do" text, and that video again. They really want you to watch that video.

Do Not Want.

Let me say that again.

DO NOT WANT.

What *is* it with this insistence on making new users sit through videos, instead of giving them the text? I could read and absorb several pages of help file in the time it takes them to get through the chirpy "hi, this is a wonderful new thing and I'm going to tell you how wonderful a thing it is!!!" Why am I required to sit through some linear, slow experience that does not actually tell me what I need to know?

Yes, I know that a lot of their target market prefer or need a video, and preferably a dumbed down video. Fine. Let them have it. But some of us are wired to find it easier to take in information as text. Please, please, please give us a "skip the video" link that takes us straight to the text version of the "read me first".

And when I get to the settings -- oh look, it still defaults to showing your follower/following lists to the world. You have to make an active choice to turn on privacy, or it'll display that stuff as soon as you post your first Buzz.

[headdesk]

This is a tool I might have actually found useful if it had not been a continuing display of disrespect for user privacy. I cannot trust this thing not to start disgorging information that should not be public without explicit opt-in authorisation, and thus I cannot use it.

In my world, not being evil includes not unilaterally publishing someone else's address book complete with indicators of the most contacted addresses, and especially does not include deliberately making it almost impossible for even tech-savvy users to turn off the unsolicited share and enjoy experience. It particularly does not include an actively deceptive "turn off" option that merely removes it from your own view while leaving your information exposed to world+dog.

My jules.jones@gmail.com address is public, deliberately so. The email addresses it has had contact with are *not* public, deliberately so. And most of the other gmail addresses I own are equally not public -- at least until Google decided that All Your Privacy Are Belong To Us.

Of course, Google CEO Eric Schmidt thinks that only the Important People such as himself are entitled to any online privacy. But until now Google actually has been reasonably careful not to make public that information which it was given in the expectation it would remain private.

I am Not Amused by the current demonstration of privilege. I'm not a Google-hater -- I lived within easy walking distance of the Googleplex, one of my regular drinking chums was a Googloid at the time, and as a result I hold one of the first few non-employee GMail accounts. But equally, I've seen how deeply the Googloids can buy into the "don't be evil" mantra, to the extent of genuinely believing that the company's fuck-up de jour is a boon to mankind. (Don't ask me about their embrace and extend attitude to other people's copyright, just don't.) It would not surprise me in the slightest if there are a bunch of people in Mountain View going "but what did we do?" right now.

As a result of this particular fuck-up, I'm going to have to spend several hours going through my accounts making sure I've jumped through all the myriad of hoops needed to make sure the damn thing is turned off and stays off -- and that anything which was exposed in the meantime is taken down. Really not amused by that prospect, even though I'd have probably found Buzz useful on my public account had it been introduced in a sane manner with default options that protected privacy.

There's what looks like a good Google privacy checklist on PC World. I'll be working my way through that when I have an opportunity later this week. Google have backed down on some of the most obnoxious problems, but they're going to take their own sweet time about applying the changes to those accounts which have already been compromised.