Google continues Buzz-off

Feedback received loud and clear...

Privacy bungler Google is continuing to roll back features and elements of its Buzz social notworking tool.

Since its launch last week Buzz has met with howls of criticism, and the firm has rushed to address it. Today in a blog post the company said, "We've heard your feedback loud and clear, and since we launched Google Buzz four days ago, we've been working around the clock to address the concerns you've raised. Today, we wanted to let you know about a number of changes we'll be making over the next few days based on all the feedback we've received."

One of the first things to be addressed is auto-following, which has been refined so that just the people you are in contact with regularly are included in your list of followers. This is expected to counter many of the privacy complaints that have been thrown at the firm. "We're moving to an auto-suggest model. You won't be set up to follow anyone until you have reviewed the suggestions and clicked "Follow selected people and start using Buzz," explained Google.

Further calming down the privacy sensitive, Buzz will no longer automatically connect any public Picasa photo albums and Google Reader items automatically, which when you write it down makes it seem incredible that the firm would ever have done that in the first place.

A new tab within Gmail will make it easier to opt out of Buzz, in fact much easier. Previously the 'turn off Buzz' option was lurking at the bottom of the screen in a rather small font.

"It's been an exciting and challenging week for the Buzz team", wrote the, er, Buzz team to the sound of stable doors being slammed shut. "We've been getting feedback via the Gmail help forums and emails from friends and family, and we've also been able to do something new: read the buzz about Buzz itself. We quickly realised that we didn't get everything quite right. We're very sorry for the concern we've caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We'll continue to do so."

But we still wonder where all the adults at Google were when it decided to turn on Buzz in the first place.