Google Buzz
February 11, 2010
The sad thing about Google Buzz is that it marks a complete failure of user-centered design.
Logically, the added Buzz functionality belongs in Google Reader. That’s where I read blogs, subscribe to friend feeds, comment on posted links, and share items.
However, Google added Buzz to Gmail–not because it belongs there, but because Gmail has more users than Reader, and Google’s goal is to push as many people as possible into using Buzz. That’s also why they made the profiles so privacy-invading by default.
As Giles Bowkett put it, Google’s best product became a launching point for a poor product which couldn’t stand on its own.
As far as I’m concerned, I’ll use Buzz when they put it in Reader where it belongs. Half the time I don’t use Gmail’s web interface to read my mail anyway, I use a mail client.
Until Google put Buzz where it belongs, it’s time to turn off Buzz and hide it from the Gmail interface.
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There are links into reader though and it’s screwed that up too.
At the same time Buzz rolled out the shared items of all the people it decided I should follow appeared in my Reader feed to third party apps all of a sudden. No warning that this would happen, just a flood of other people’s crap (I say that with all due respect, you and others may like it but it’s not mine).
I don’t know anyone who hasn’t turned Buzz off, it’s a deployment that makes the many rounds of facebook UI changes look slick by comparison. I seriously can’t remember any IT related change that’s annoyed me this much (and I have a laptop running Vista at work).
It’s just awful beyond belief. Not only have they introduced a shit service but they’ve screwed up their decent services in the process.
The sad thing is, there must have been technical people at Google saying “No, we’re doing this the wrong way, people are going to hate it…”–but I bet they were shouted down by the marketing department.