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Journalists and others with confidentiality issues may no longer have to worry quite as much about Google's new Buzz social media product automatically disclosing their Gmail address and frequent correspondents. Facing a barrage of criticism, Google has quickly changed some settings to opt-in rather than opt-out, and now will let you easily abandon Buzz entirely while keeping your Gmail account. The best piece I've seen on how badly Google failed to grasp the real world is at Silicon Valley Insider:
We have a message for the brilliant people behind Google Buzz (and the rest of Google's products): the rest of the world is NOT like you. These privacy concerns aren't for the incredibly computer savvy, the patient beta testers, or Twitter and Facebook power users.Our concerns are for the people who, when encountering a new service, click "save and continue" until it is completely set-up and functional, reading as little text in various dialogue boxes as they can. These people are the people we call the "normals."
Some of these "normals" are physicians or mental health professionals who have patients they email with. Some of these people are journalists (ahem!) dealing with anonymous sources. Some of these people are spouses who are finding a safe way out of bad marriages with the help of someone their spouse doesn't know about. Some of them are junior staffers, secretly arranging to get a 50% raise going to a new company to become a manager for the first time.
None of these people should be expected to "catch" the fact that, when they begin using Google Buzz without changing any default settings, they are about to expose to the world these private relationships.
Nor is anyone too surprised that another social media network made the mistake of catering to the early adopters and the gushing enthusiasts, rather than the normals. It's always more fun to get free promotion. Mashable praises Google's quickness to change.