Monkey Business at Google

Google is everywhere. It has taken over everything. It's so huge that it became a verb! It is a search engine, blog host, an electronic map, and photo album/sharer. Now Google is looking to get a piece of the social networking action. Last week Google was very excited to launch Buzz to compete with the likes of Facebook and MySpace. Except there was a hiccup. A huge one. And thus can be considered, as Laura would say, an EPIC FAIL.

Last week, when 37 million people signed onto their gmail accounts, they got automatically signed up with Buzz. Probably like most people, I didn't even really think about it. I saw a window that asked if I wanted to check out the new Buzz or just go to my gmail. I just clicked onto gmail, not realizing that I just joined Buzz.

That is not even the worse part. I found out from reading this article that Buzz reviews your contact list and compiles a list of people who you email the most. Then you automatically become their follower. Then they can view everyone I am supposedly following and even get their email addresses. WTF! I don't want people seeing who I contact the most. I don't want people getting my friends' emails without their permission.

I can think of so many ramifications to this. What if I order sex toys or porn through email all the time? What if I had a strange disease and was emailing a specialist about it? What if I was having an affair? What if I had famous friends? (Yeah right.) What if I had criminals for friends? (Like my drug dealer. Haha. Jk.)

This is such an evasion of privacy. It's ridiculous. How did Google think this was okay? Facebook does crap like this, not Google. Now it is in trouble with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). And I'm sure many gmail users are pissed off.

Google, you really screwed up!