Happy Holidays Google: Here’s An Angry Mob

“Twas the week before Christmas,

And all through the plex,

Algos were churning,

Pages indexed.”

Sorry, couldn’t resist…. but something was going on the week before xmas rolled in. On the 14th of this month, the Google Reader team put a new feature in place that has got some peoples chestnuts seriously on fire.  Anyone who had viewed a feed or particular blog post and marked it as public was now sharing that with every single person in their GoogleTalk contact list.  This could be very embarrassing.

Forgetting What Public Means

This is something I love about human nature.  We see things on websites, take for granted their use or literary meaning, and only make a stir about it when it changes or goes away.  Public.  F&%^ING PUBLIC!  What does that mean?!?  I’ll give you a hint.  It’s not PRIVATE.  In fact, a little birdie told me it was the opposite of private.  Please tell me that the little birdie is not smarter than these people… please….

But in the defense of the people who weren’t paying attention to the features of Google Reader, I will say that the big G did come up and execute a pretty hairbrained idea on this one.  To me, this was almost like a Microsoft move to be honest.  We know what’s best for you, and we know who your friends are, we know that you like this website…. so logic can deduce that your friends will like it too!

Dancing On The Privacy High Wire

People like strange crap.  We all have our guilty pleasure bookmarks.  I have bookmarks that I won’t share with anyone because I know one thing fo damn sho son;  it ain’t nobody’s business what sites I like and bookmark.  I will share out of my own choice thank you very much.  And this is something that others are saying too.

In essence, Google took these peoples information and shared it with other users without really announcing it to users first.  Not everyone on your Google Talk list is really your friend.  Some are co-workers, some are family, some are weirdos you used to work with, some are ex’s,  one is that guy from another country that likes to pester you for no reason…

Point is, user democracy makes for a better scenario.  Let people share willingly.

The Pooch Screwed Google

People started going batshit about this right before Christmas over at various Google sites.  Again, in a Microsoft fashion, Google left without giving any indication as to what they were gonna do about it and went on Xmas break.  But after the geeks at the plex got their fill of eggnog and fruitcake and waddled back to their cubicles, there was one last present waiting for them.  A large, angry present.

The number of pissed off people grew over the holiday break, as did the frustration about this feature.  So one more time, straight from the “Microsoft How-To Customer Service Book”, Google is doing what you can expect they would do.  They’re not changing the feature, nor are they really addressing what people are saying.

Conclusion

Google needs to really think of how to roll out new products with this incident in mind.  People are stupid, and stupid people like to do things that later they claim they didn’t do or don’t understand why they did it in the first place.  Like not reading how a feature works on something they’re using, and happily clicking check boxes and radio buttons regardless of what it does.  Google needs to remember this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 6:47 am and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.