Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Buzz, Google’s foray into social media, seems to have the most potentia
l (for good and for harm) on mobile. The service is getting mixed reviews this week, but – for me – the more I hear about the mobile version and the privacy issues inherent in it, my main reaction is: Google is sure lucky it’s not a telco.
Buzz, which integrates Gmail with updates from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other social networks, automatically exposes to the world the names of the people you email the most. So, for example, a jealous girlfriend can see whom her boyfriend’s been emailing, or a boss can tell if her employee is in cahoots with the competition. Liken this to a mobile operator exposing a list of people you call the most, and I can only imagine the uproar that would ensue.
That’s just on the desktop version too. As wireless operators have learned, the privacy implications of mobile location-based services are more severe. Buzz is available as a mobile application on the iPhone and Android 2.0 handsets, and eventually on Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 and BlackBerry devices.
The handset-optimized version of Buzz lets users geo-tag their locations, post updates and read posts from friends nearby – similar to Twitter’s geo-tagging service. Buzz taps the phone’s GPS and sends its coordinates to the Google cloud, which then sends the user’s location back to the phone for the user to verify. The result is a pretty specific location, down to the address – again – for the world to see. Users give permission to do this automatic locating, but only once.
With the browser version, Buzz.google.com, and Google Maps integration, the service becomes more interesting. It turns Buzz into a Friend-Finding app, one that can be voice-activated, and helps foster an already growing environment of social broadcasting and recommendations. A public view lets you see what people you don’t follow are talking about if they’re nearby. Buzz also has potential to create a powerful targeted mobile advertising vehicle, which brings its own set of privacy issues along with it.
As icing on the cake, according to reports, Buzz may also pull photos from Android-based phones that the user never uploaded. I can’t imagine Google lets this slip-up last long, but when you think about all the information Google has about you (not to mention what you search for), it’s troubling.
For all the potential that Google Buzz has, it may never be realized if Google doesn’t figure out these non-trivial privacy issues. All of these services, including Buzz itself, are easily turned off, but that won’t matter to a lot of consumers who get defaulted into the service.
Wireless operators have learned how carefully they have to tread around privacy issues, which is a big reason why they’ve dragged their feet in opening up their location APIs. They’ve also learned the importance of letting consumers opt in, not opt out. As a provider of free web-based services, Google doesn’t always get the same scrutiny that a telco would, but with services like Buzz, perhaps it should.