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Two Scoops of Buzz
Lots of Buzz buzz is still running through the internets yet, so here's a bit more of it, just in case you aren't burnt out yet. Google has added a one-button disable option to totally remove the system from Gmail. I'm sure someone there sure wishes that had been on by default. This is partially in response to a class action complaint and follows earlier cleanup efforts as well as an apology for auto-follow. Since there is no Facebook interaction, I still wonder what traction they will get. But maybe this means the end of Twitter.
I just ignore the bugger. No need for me to nuke. Unless Google has added really cool special effects.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
How was twitter going to make money anyway?
Twitter's power is that you dont have to go there to use it or update it. I've got 90,000,000 twitter apps to choose from on EVERY platform. Hell even my home automation gear from crestron has twitter interoperability.
Twitter has critical mass and support on everything.. Buzz has none of that currently.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
While a lot of people are using this fiasco as evidence that Google's a bunch of techies who don't understand users, I can't really believe that it was totally unforseen and accidental. Google made a conscious decision to leverage their existing social graph of webmail users by, as automatically as possible, turning it into an actual social-network graph. If they hadn't done that, Buzz would probably not have jump-started very quickly, but now it has a huge built-in userbase. Even if a bunch of people disable it now, they're probably still way ahead in terms of total users than where they would've been if they had played nice.
So may turn out they did know what they were doing, at least from a business perspective.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Not to mention there's less motivation to go to a new social network when there are existing ones already set up with many people using it. I highly doubt Google can go far here.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
I'm guessing it would be the same thing he does every night ... fuck Demi Moore.
I've got a google account for using analytics and other stuff but I'm not using it for email. That means that I seldom need to log into google and in turn that means that buzz basically doesn't exist for me. I don't think I'm alone. Furthermore I can search tweets even without logging it to twitter. That's much more convenient.
Yeah, Google didn't stand a chance against the likes of Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, their spunky little upstart 'gmail' thing took forEVER just to get out of beta! Can't say that anyone was really attracted to it, what with all the established options out there. Who will take it seriously?!!
No, Buzz has something better... Interoperability with -every- site out there. If the site has an RSS feed for your updates, you can bring them into Buzz really easily. If it doesn't, the site can choose to integrate more directly with Buzz.
The only thing I've found lacking in Buzz is the ability to find and follow random people. With twitter, when I'm learning Japanese, I can watch the live twitter global feed and find people posting interesting things in Japanese and follow them. Buzz doesn't have that... Yet.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Unless Google has added really cool special effects.
The most notable bell/whistle (aside from smoove integration with GMail) is Aardvark. I posted about my experiences with it a couple days ago and have since answered more questions. My interactions with the people have been surprisingly pleasant and positive ... and surprisingly helpful! My interactions with the chat bot (aardvark-g201) have been frustrating at best. AI is in a sorry state if this is what they have to offer me. It's basically like trying to interact with a chat bot that offers you shell-like controls ('more', 'try', 'pass', etc). And you're supposed to achieve conversational results from those controls!
I will say that I don't know what I'm getting out of it other than allowing Google to know more about me and helping people. It doesn't offer much more than Yahoo Answers or Wikianswers. I get a lot of auto "thanks!" replies on Aardvark and will more than likely eventually gravitate back to Wikipedia where my time invested disseminating knowledge probably goes a little further in the grand scheme of things.
That said, Buzz has a long ways to go before it even approaches Facebook or puts a dent in Twitter. Any integration to/from Facebook will have to be entirely Google's effort.
My work here is dung.
I'm guessing it would be the same thing he does every night ... fuck Demi Moore.
Ewww
And all Google has to do is create a unique Buzz email address to send updates to (like Facebook has recently done), and you get instant support on any platform capable of sending email.
When Facebook came out with the unique email address to upload images and update status, I dumped my Blackberry Facebook app and I just use email now. So at this point, switching to Buzz would be a matter of changing the email address my pictures and updates go to.
This would make new Buzz apps for platforms trivial to implement.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Need I say more?
Not to mention there's less motivation to go to a new social network when there are existing ones already set up with many people using it. I highly doubt Google can go far here.
Eh thats what people thought with MySpace - but look at Facebook now.
Google, being the power house that it is, could easily build the apps and operability that Twitter has. Except for ONE snag:
I think the biggest thing holding it back will be its competitors. Given that Google has broken into the Smartphone market with the Droid and all that - I doubt Apple is going to approve any apps that let you update your Buzz.
You can make Buzz a billion times better than twitter and implement new features, but if the iPhone holds a reasonable market share, and the iPhone doesn't let you update it, it's not likely to take off.
Inversely - if somehow this DOES become more popular, an odd occurence I couldn't see happening, iPhone sales could drop unless they allow an App for Buzz.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
it's 140 characters limit is great to avoid loads of bullshit. One of the greatest things of twitter is precisely that; it forces you to go to the point.
Dear
I'm guessing it would be the same thing he does every night ... fuck Demi Moore.
Ewww
Did she have a facelift? Her pic on IMDB looks like she's a space alien from Roswell.
Oh wait....
At the moment, there are a number of things holding buzz back from widespread usage:
/ceiling/: the number of gmail users; the userbase may be large but it's closed and entry is a large hurdle for many
* buzz has a userbase
* complicating the adoption is the number of those gmail users whose friends also use gmail and would be likely to use buzz, lowering the actual ceiling further
* when people see that not many of their friends are using it, but are/have been using other services, that makes buzz adoption difficult
there are advantages to buzz of course (mobile/geo-loc/post length/etc), but the question remains whether those advantages will eventually outweigh the challenges to more widespread adoption.
Google has been the darling of the tech media for a long time now, but for the last few years, more and more media companies see Google as a competitor, or see google as unfairly profiting off their publications. I think this whole fiasco is overblown by journalists who have a bone to pick with the company. Any change to a popular product like gmail is going to bother some people and offend others and all the stories seem to focus on this.
Don't get me wrong, I think there are some serious issues with buzz, especially with it's added noise to the social networking scene, but most of the bad press has to do with the 'privacy issue'. Honestly, when Myspace launched every profile was public and most facebook friend lists are still public. Where is the outrage there?
The current so-called social networks and websites are not truly social. They offer a level of interaction, but it is muted by their strict adherence to selfishness. They still believe they can own your social graph.
Until websites like Facebook and services like Buzz truly offer a federated protocol they are not social. They are barely even part of the internet until they fulfill the internet's implicit social contract that has existed from the start: anyone with the resources can throw up a service and participate. That's true for websites, mail servers, and all of the various protocols that sit atop of the IP.
I recognize that Google is building another layer above HTTP, but that doesn't except them from the contract. They seem to have some understanding of that fact, where they chose to make Wave federated. I expect them to highly integrate Buzz with Wave, and in doing so they will be pushing for a truly social service. But in the meantime it's not there yet.
if you have google and youtube you might want to check your youtube privacy settings. even if you've never uploaded a video youtube automatically creates a youtube homepage for you that has a lot of information about your viewing habits. you can't get rid of the page, but you can use your privacy settings to disable the various feeds to it.
Was there all along:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=171463
"You can post Buzz by sending an email to buzz@gmail.com (you can share photos and text this way). In order to make this work, though, you'll need to send the email from the Gmail address you want to be connected to the post (e.g. which name will appear with your post)."
What exactly is twitter doing that couldn't be done with existing blogging sites that have email updates? Nothing says you have to write 2k words on your blog post, you could write 120 characters on any blogging site and do the same thing.
I do like the idea of pushing towards more open standards. Email is a standard everyone can agree with, everyone can interoperate with. I can send mail from my phone to someone on a mac or a pc or linux. I can swap out clients if I find one I like more. I do like the idea of transitioning these sorts of services to protocols and then you're selecting the provider you want based on how that protocol is implemented.
I see value in what Facebook does even though I dislike the way it's implemented, similar to the way I like what Exchange/Outlook is trying to do while hating everything about the way it's actually done.
There's been talk about trying to open up the silos represented by these applications. You have your data in twitter, you have your data in facebook, you have your data in google, and there's lots of duplication across each. Facebook will talk to google to import your data but that's a bit clunky and is still just putting your stuff in another silo. I like the idea of more interoperability but am also concerned about the potential for holes. I don't mind if my facebook gets hacked because there's nothing important on there, nothing personal or embarrassing. I don't put anything there I wouldn't mind seeing on the front page of the new york times. But if facebook had tight access to my gmail, suddenly a hole in facebook could become a hole in gmail. Not so good.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Buzz is no problem for me, unless I decide I WANT to add yet another email to my list to use it.
ETA on implementing it for Google Apps users is months away, and there may be questions on whether it is even implemented at all for those on the free plan.
I consider this odd. Google Apps users tend to either be schools/small biz, or geeks.
Sure, Schools and Small Biz may not provide Google with much traction for Buzz, but geeks are more likely to, especially geeks who obviously like Google Stuff (tm).
And yet, those are more likely to be the ones hitching a free ride.
Things that make you go hmmmm....
Google, being the power house that it is, could easily build the apps and operability that Twitter has.
Oh please, no - the apps and all that crap are why I ditched twitter and facebook and the rest. No more freaking retarded data mining nuisance apps!
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I'm using it with my friends and it feels pretty nice. Privacy options are decently understandable, relatively granular, and it's not all that invasive. It's an excellent way to start a conversation with a select group of individuals you know, without the 140-character limitations of Twitter or the OMG APPLICATIONS environment of Facebook. Moreover, TONS of people already have gmail accounts so it's not much work to get people to use it.
I've seen this facebook group that states they are a group of people who are going to drop Facebook once it starts charging $2.95 per month to use it. I don't know if there is anything to this, but if Fb starts to charge for use, then Buzz will have all sorts of traction.
Buzz uses Twitter as a data feed. This is convenient for Buzz, but isn't gonna make Twitter disappear any time soon.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Most people I know would drop it if it wasn't free. I've only used it for a year and I'm already kind of over it.
I'd guess that they would start charging the for-profit users first, then some of the groups, and so on.
But they really rely on the network effect, and anything that causes them to lose users will have a cascading effect as people quit using it.
Before Buzz was changed to suggest, instead of automatically follow, what information was jeopardized? Could somebody see your other contacts, your contacts email addresses, your location? I am not sure I understand what was actually leaked. I noticed in one of the links it says some woman's ex husband was able to find her location through Buzz. How is that possible and how could Google be so stupid! Someone please elaborate.
One of the worrying things in buzz is that you can use it as a blogging engine. You can search for public buzzes that have some text you are interested into, you can comment on them (no registration required, more than being able to participate in buzz) and from there follow the original poster if you want, is not just a short tweet, but a full entry. Same for photos, videos, etc. It blends communities, with blogs, with mails. But all with just google ads. Probably is more or less the same with facebook, and if well looks a bit more open to internet, still could end being a walled garden too.
Buzz doesn't support Blackberry* yet. Not everyone has a Android or iPhone. So I would say that until The Google decides to support Blackberry with a native app, then there is no option but to ignore it.
*Appearently Opera on BB runs the Javascript needed, but it is a hack/cludge to d/l Opera and bypass all the warnings needed to BUZZ.
** I wonder if we're gonna call people who "Buzz" .... wait for it ... Buzzards ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I killed for my gmail invite... I mean, I would have killed. Yeah, that is it. No skeletons in my closet, no sirree.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
N.S.A..
I hope this helps with your communications encryptions.
Yours In Minsk,
K. Trout
From a go-to-market POV, getting "buzz" and an initial user-base is the most difficult part of social network-based apps. To the old adage: ask for forgiveness, not permission. Personally, I think it is just fun for people to hate on Google (the big institution)... heck the Avant-garde of hatin' big business is even hatin' on Apple! Now that I just find funny... reminds me of that South Park "Smug" episode. I digress. Google will always struggle with using its data and users to its advantage without losing them. To Google or any other company (Slashdot included), we're all just data points. There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those who get that and those who don't. --
you're a fucking retard. There are already 2 buzz apps on the iphone appstore.
Was why I didn't use Buzz. Made sure it was disabled as soon as I could. I don't want some spheres of my life intersecting.
An example of what can go wrong, and generate big lawsuits in the process of failing.
Best Slashdot Co
Yup look at how Orkut has DECIMATED facebook and Myspace!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hey, I don't have an Iphone so I wouldn't bother to check. But then that just means Buzz has headroom to grow bigger than twitter.
We can only hope.
Facebook HAS decimated Myspace though..... sooooo
Every casual user I know still use hotmail. I don't think Gmail is THAT important to them. Buzz won't ever reach Twitter's proportion. Google is geek/power user oriented.
This is a stolen sig.
"once it starts charging $2.95 per month to use it" FUD or hilarious. If Facebook charged $1 once it would be gone in a matter of hours.
You forgot the "LAME!!!" ending. In the spirit of the Olympics, we'll have to deduct a point from your final moderation score for that gaff.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm fairly positive this is why they had autofollow. This leverages existing social networks to "jumpstart" a new one.
I don't get why autofollow was so bad - you only got autofollowed when you created your account, and at that point, you have no content on your feed. What's the big deal? The people following you see zilch until you post some content to Buzz - if you don't want someone seeing that update, block/remove them from your followers before you start using Buzz.
Gmail was able to take on the likes of Hotmal and Yahoo Mail because it was usually pretty easy to get your contacts list into and out of most email systems. Thus, you could easily leverage existing social networks (for email, your addressbook) in GMail.
For a more integrated social network, it's a lot harder to migrate that existing network you have. Google already had one in the form of your Google Talk chat contacts.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
That group (and all of the similar groups) is basically a bunch of idiots that fell victim to a rumor. Congratulations on falling for it along with them.
As other posters have said, charging for Facebook, even a tiny amount, would instakill it. Look at what Pay-to-Play did to the online game Planetarion back around 2002-2003...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Shhh... Just all act like Twitter is dying anyway, and hope the rumor will catch enough fire to get messages on Twitter going on. Until they either die in a massive flamewar, or enough arguments come up so that most Twitterers will enter our reality and start to hate Twitter. (Which also means its dead.)
It’s the information wars. You are an Internet veteran. Act like one. :)
Twitter will die, because even the tiniest flaws will become huge unfathomable mountains of madness, if you give them time to grow. Let’s throw out some seeds. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
People will sign up for just about anything you put a username and password on.
Often with the same password too. :p
Reply to That ||
That's because they marketed the the storage capacity of the gmail inbox with a shared-potential model instead of the split-up-evenly one like hotmail etc. and effectively had a better offer? I don't even know what the Buzz is all about but they sure have the buzz.
Buzz Off?
I think the biggest thing holding it back will be its competitors. Given that Google has broken into the Smartphone market with the Droid and all that - I doubt Apple is going to approve any apps that let you update your Buzz.
You think Apple are going to combat the Google Droid by intentionally blocking the ability of the iPhone to do something people who buy it may want? If I was Apple I would want to ensure that updating Buzz on the iPhone was better than doing it on the Droid ;)
Google's notoriously short attention span.
I use gmail for storage,thats was there claim to fame as web mail,free massive amount of storage and less intrusive ads. Why would i want to use google for anything social? there the masters of data collection.
Jack of all trades,master of none
You can post Buzz by email to buzz@gmail.com from your gmail account. So as long as your gmail account is setup in your mail client, this is in place now.
Why oh why must they force the integration of Google Buzz and Google Reader? I use google reader every day, often share things with various contacts, and read things that have been shared with me. It was awesome. Then Google Buzz came along and forced integration of the two. I don't want Google Buzz but if I go ahead and remove it, it'll remove the sharing abilities I had within Google Reader. I understand the possible benefit of having the two connected, by choice, but without choice Google is simply screwing up one of their actually decent products!
Who need's speling and grammar?
Shit, i just ran out of mod points.
Great SNL reference!
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
The strength of buzz is it's too convenient NOT to use. It's also a solid alternative for people who for various reasons can't or don't log into facebook from work.
That's it exactly. I don't use either Facebook or Twitter just because of the hassle and my own time constraints. I do use Gmail however, and have loved Buzz as a quick and easy way to see what all my friends and family are up to. I don't need to log into anything else, it's all right there with my email. I may be in the minority, but I love Buzz for the convenience alone.
I don't get why autofollow was so bad - you only got autofollowed when you created your account, and at that point, you have no content on your feed. What's the big deal?
Indeed, when tens of millions of people suddenly find a new software in their familiar email client they instantly know all there is to know how it works and what to do and what not to do. Even though none of that was explained to them. One of my friends, who also has a Gmail account, posted a test Buzz, and lots of people saw it (and me, before I disabled the sorry thing.)
Google already had one in the form of your Google Talk chat contacts.
There is quite a difference between sending a chat message to one selected contact and between sending a message to all contacts.
i use GMail through GAfYD. 90% of the Googleverse stuff works there. It's that last 10% that's driving me nuts. It doesn't support chat by itself (your domain host has to allow it, mine does not). It doesn't support Buzz.
So i have kept my ol' trusty GMail account just for those.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Google, being the power house that it is, could easily build the apps and operability that Twitter has.
Oh please, no - the apps and all that crap are why I ditched twitter and facebook and the rest. No more freaking retarded data mining nuisance apps!
Who modded this up? The apps he's talking about are client applications that interface with the twitter service. Not the stupid facebook games that you're referring to.
I might use Buzz, Facebook, etc. if it was easier to deal with unwanted contacts. No, Weird Guy From Work, I do not want to friend you... and rather than have that conversation over and over, I just don't use those services.
But if I could add just REAL friends, and be 100% invisible to everyone else... that would be great. If I have not explicitly invited you into my inner circle, you shouldn't even see that I am a user of the site, if I don't want you to.
I don't use twitter and I won't use this, either. I gave it a shot (after the initial major privacy concerns were fixed), but I kept getting dozens of "followers" every day and I don't have a fucking clue who ANY of them are. Even worse, the only way to fully disable "buzz" is to use their one-button "remove my account" function... which ALSO NEEDLESSLY DELETES YOUR GOOGLE PROFILE. Why!? I want my google profile. I just don't fucking want to use that Buzz shit. There's no reason to delete my profile just to delete buzz. They are clearly tying the two together so that people will go to delete buzz and see that it will also remove their profile and they'll stop and say "well shit, I really want my profile still.... so I guess I can't remove buzz".
No, though those are especially odious.
I'm referring to the 6 million iPhone and Android twitter/facebook/linked-in feed tracker and update apps.
They're not only a huge security hole (giving an unknown third-party your login details), they also frequently inject ads and such into your feeds and do things like auto post "user is using service on the iPhone!" and the like.
Direct example from this morning (name omitted):
"User is now using the new LinkedIn for iPhone application. Get it now "
Does this add value? Not to me. Is this a real status update? No. Just spam.
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I deleted my gmail account as soon as I heard about the horrific gross absent-minded violation of my privacy. "fixing things after the fact" doesn't cut it when it comes to things like this. If they're this utterly stupid once, then they'll be this stupid again.
Seriously, google at one time was "I trust them more than anyone, do no evil and they seem to mean it", but then lately over to "maybe kinda not trust" - but this throws them all the way right through to "trust less that Microsoft, and no where f***** near as trustworthy as Yahoo".
I will not under any circumstances ever trust them with anything important ever again.
I blocked a douchebag I know. I don't see his posts, due to the block, but he still gets to harass me via friends' buzz postings. Apparently the only way to not be harassed is to not use Buzz.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
You don't need to get your friends to join Google Mail to send them messages from Google Mail. If you'd actually read and considered the OP, instead of jumping into the discussion with sarcastic comments, you might have understood this.
After all this fame and fortune, he's still trying to prove himself by fucking his mother.
Twitter's power is that you dont have to go there to use it or update it.
No, Twitter's power is that it provides a platform for popular people to communicate with their followers/fans/supporters. Twitter's draw these days is that it's a great place for anyone from a mayor to a moviestar to a CEO to the president to say whatever they like.
Buzz is great for me, but when celebrities use it, their posts become spam magnets because the popularity of their post is shared with the responders. Twitter so loosely couples tweets with responses that there is little or no sharing of the popularity of the original.
I prefer to keep my social networking account and the email I use for purchasing goods online separate, thank you very much. Get this shit out of my "secure" email.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, iPhone integration was built into Buzz from day 1. In fact it's better than normal Buzz because if you let it use your geolocation you can see other buzzes near your current vicinity on Google maps.
Hotmail/Yahoo provisioned every last user 100mb of disk space (when that was the vogue space limit)? Hah! They oversold just like Google does. Google, however, did it bigger and better. They knew practical people hardly keep crap around in their email, and they provided a really good tool to keep spam away. Heck, my current inbox hasnt been cleaned out for 18 months and it still only has 290MB of usage.
Motivation is as motivation does; it is completely wrong to say 'why, no one would go to a new service when the old service works just fine!', regardless of the techniques used by the service. When something better comes along, people move without looking back. I am not saying Buzz is that better thing, but it is stupid to assume that just because existing things are popular now, that something else can't be in the future.
Google buzz is useless until it adds a "Please Rob Me" function.
"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed." Abraham Lincoln
"But maybe this means the end of Twitter". One can only hope!
Twiggle
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
I don't get why autofollow was so bad - you only got autofollowed when you created your account, and at that point, you have no content on your feed. What's the big deal? The people following you see zilch until you post some content to Buzz - if you don't want someone seeing that update, block/remove them from your followers before you start using Buzz.
Nice idea, but if you don't know its on by default as I didn't (because they didn't bother to tell you, let alone ask) you go try it out only to find that Google remembers. It knows about that one time you talked to that person and suddenly they are auto-following you whether you had any intention of ever keeping in touch with them again.
It opened the door to the annoying twit you had all but pushed out of your mind but didn't care enough or simply didn't get around to delete from your contacts. It restablishes contact with people you didn't care to keep in touch with. By default. Publicly. I was pretty annoyed at reading some of those names again. One of them I did remove from my contacts but stil appeared because there were some emails saved that contained its address in a distribution list. So yeah, they were total morons for doing it the way they did and I only wish Google would be burned even worse so next time they actually put some thought on the way they release features rather than surprising you like this.
+Raider of the lost BBS
Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, says, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Is he evil and stupid, or just plain stupid?
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Ah, so with Twitter you think you're learning Japanese... (you really think so).
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
I really do. I am using all their services (search, mail, reader, groups, picassa, some docs).
You name it.
But the intrussion with Buzz was completely unnaceptable.
All of the sudden I had several guys, some of whom I didn't know, following me. And I was "following" some others.
I felt really agravated by my email account having being used in such a way.
I will be paying far more attention to Google's conduct in the future. The sad thing is that all this debacle was entirely avoidable, and some common sense would have sufficied to manage everything satisfactorily (Google should have hired me, I understand about security and privacy matters :-) ).
I don't use Facebook because I don't want to be stalked online, and they will not get my real name anytime soon.
So Why should I use something where my privacy is so svagedely exposed?
I want to keep family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, business partners and ocassional contacts perfectly isolated from each other. I don't want people in my real life to intrude into my online activities and viceversa.
If Google wants to do something about this they could develop the concept of personality or of profiles, so I can check different personality's activities without mixing things.
I would love to have different email addresses which I can check in the same place and which address books, contacts, buzz activity and others remain neatly separated.
As things currently are, having several different email accounts in Google is a PITA. Doable but an absolute PITA.
It's probably a lot cheaper to pay out a class-action lawsuit than it is to advertise and persuade and plead and beg people to use their service. Google sold out when they went public (literally) and trends are showing they don't care anymore about their users. The strategy benefits their real customers (advertisers) and their stockholders much more. They drew a line in the sand but just kept adding beach on the other side. It's a show of their lack of conviction, which is common to most people.