So, this is my sub-1-hour experience with Google Buzz.
Take the blue pill
I access Gmail, and get notified that I was endowed with the privilege of using Google Buzz. This endowment came in the form of a huge blue button (sort of pill-shaped) saying something like "Yes mommy, I want Buzz", with a little link on the side which said (and now I quote) "Nah, just take me to my inbox". So far so good, I'm a geek and I don't like not trying stuff — unlike the horde of pundits who enjoy bashing what they never used. The result is immediately becoming a follower of a gazillion people who live in my Contacts simply because at some time Gmail would add there anyone with whom I happened to exchange more than one e-mail.
E-mail-like pressure
The next present is having a new Inbox. A new "bold-with-a-number-between-brackets" monster nagging me, but with unimportant stuff — some of which, by the way, I already get on Google Reader. Talk about evolution: Gmail gives me the cutting edge technology to send Bacn (social network notifications, newsletters, mailing list digests and reminders) out of my sight, and yet I now have a new top-billed pain in the ass telling me (with near-e-mail urgency) that someone thought it would be nice to share the latest fail or lolcat with the rest of the world, regardless of whether they subscribe to that specific contents. Well, if/when I want to submit myself to that kind of content overflow, I'll go check my items on Google Reader, thank you, I don't need an inbox sidekick.
But, lo and behold, Gmail also gives me the (not obvious) ability to get that "Buzz (2)" thing out of my way: just drag it to below the labels.
“You can run, but you cannot hide”
So this was how it went: Buzz would stay put, people would share things, but I wouldn't mind it unless I really were in the mood of explicitly and deliberately go and check what shook. And then something landed on my inbox, and my world crumbled.
I had posted a buzz to test the service, and now someone had commented it. And so, to let me know, my own buzz takes a quantum leap and lands in my Inbox. Not on the Inbox-like Buzz icon: my friggin' email Inbox! So there goes the "Buzz will be here quiet and still, and I'll just check out now and then to see if this is worth it" experience. Once again: monkey evolved to man, man evolved to mindless e-mail consumer, mindless e-mail consumer evolved to e-mail consumer who makes Bacn skip the Inbox, and then Buzz came along and zarked it all up. What's best? The only option Buzz gives you is to "mute" a buzz — mute one buzz, not the "I don't want comments to any of my buzzes to end up in my Inbox" kind of mute — and the filter rules can't be fit to filter this, Bacn style turns out you can use the non-obvious fact that Buzz thingies are automatically assigned the hidden, reserved label "buzz" (so you can filter by criterion label:bacn).
Turns out, I didn't even have the time to think if this was a showstopper….
“You know, even the mob doesn't go after your family.”
—Bill Maher
…because suddenly my girlfriend asks me on the Gmail chat: "Who is [let's say] John Doe?"
Not just any John Doe, but the John Doe that commented on my buzz, who she does not, by any chance, know (let alone follow). Kind of guessing what was happened, I asked why she was asking who that specific person is, and voilà: the kind Buzz icon notified her that someone she doesn't know nor care about commented on a buzz from someone she follows. This is neat (not!), since it means that, when you follow someone, it means you are also implictly following the opinion of whoever reads what they share. In other words, at the extreme, without a single flick of the wrist, you are potentially following the whole world — and this is a hell of a heaven's gate for spammers.
So this had it for me.
Gag'em and bag'em (or Thanks, but no thanks)
Since there is no huge blue (or, for that case, any kind of) button to simply turn Buzz off, I instantly (wait for it) unfollowed the 30-ish people I was following (without even the faintest action from my side, if you remember well), and disabled the connection between Google Reader and Buzz (so that, when I share something on Google Reader, it isn't shared on Buzz) — let's hope that is enough to not have random comments show up in my Inbox. No more Google Buzz for me, then, i would say that I'll leave it at least until I hear that it has massively changed, but I don't find that likely. I think I'll stick to Twitter and a pre-Buzz Google Reader. And good old Gmail, which never let me down, and is now at risk of having its user experience significantly ruined by this half-assed attempt at a social-thingy-something by Google.
EDIT: Just when I think this over, I head to Google Reader and find out that unfollowing people from Buzz means also unfollowing them from Google Reader…
EDIT 2: There is a "Turn off Buzz" link in the Gmail footer. Thanks Pedro Santos.
