Minimalist Geek

Google Buzz - Privacy and Assumptions

A couple of days ago Google started rolling out Buzz. The process was more akin to steamrolling over Gmail users with Buzz. Usually, I have positive comments to make about Google’s services apart from the occasional remark on some feature or lack of.

This time round however Google made a whole mess with Buzz. In all the frenzy with Facebook and Twitter attaining super star status, Google must have caught the social networking fever.

Not wanting to be left out and not content with merely returning search results from these third party sources, Google drew plans to have its own social network. Unfortunately, instead of doing what is expected and right, i.e. announcing the service and making it available for opt-in by the huge Gmail user base, Google rushed through with its plans and in the process made some silly assumptions.

One of the biggest assumptions was that since a user has let’s say 20 frequently emailed contacts, then it was obvious that you would want to follow them in a social networking sense. I cannot believe it did not cross Google’s collective bright mind that maybe, just maybe, some of those contacts are part of your professional network and not social buddies.

Finding hard to believe this did not come up during some persona building exercise, I have to conclude that they just decided to carry on with it no matter what, with an attitude and then we will see what the users think.

This is wrong for many reasons. First, Gmail has been out of beta now for quite a while and so it is no longer a testing ground. Secondly, you introduce a service and make it opt-in, especially when it is totally unrelated to the initial service, i.e. email. Finally, when privacy is at stake you have to choose the most conservative setting, i.e. after opting in, suggesting to the user to add people in the contact list to the Buzz network, and let the user decide.

The way Buzz was introduced exploited the trust people have put into Gmail.

Personally, even if the approach was right in the first place I do not have space, time, or need for yet another social network, so I would not have switched it on. Having it forced in such an unprofessional manner only hastened my resolve to switch off Buzz once and for all.

In response to the negative feedback received, Google apologized and tweaked the system to be more privacy conscious. However, I expect better from Google, which professes “Don’t be evil” as its informal motto, than to act irresponsibly and then apologize and amend. Unless, the informal motto is just corporate posturing.

Google Wave - Email 2.0

Email has been around for quite a while now, and it has served its purpose beyond the call of duty. However, its design, having been thought out for the needs at that time, is showing its limitations ever more. So, Google’s vision of how communication should be carried out in the 21st century is very welcome.

Two major limitations of email are that as a thread progresses, the email size continues to grow since each time the previous content is repeated, and that attachments in old emails are made redundant when a new updated email is sent.

The above two issues result in a lot of traffic being generated on the networks carrying the email, and an organizational nightmare for the users.

Google, through Wave, is aiming to solve these issues amongst others by proposing a new system that works more like instant messaging rather than like email. Each conversation is called a wave, and participants to a wave can add new participants at any time. One of the advantages of this approach is that if you get added in the middle of a wave, you will not have to read a jumbled up mess of text to get up to speed with what is being said. Instead you will see an orderly presentation of who said what and in what sequence.

Furthermore, if documents are attached to the wave and updated there will only be one version to view or update, and it is always the latest and most up-to-date version.

Google wave is thus very promising. However, the system can right now only work between Google wave users and so its usefulness is limited.

For Google Wave to be a success, the system must be endorsed by other big players to transform it into an industry standard just like email. Google is making Wave an open source platform so that third party developers can extend the platform. This is definitely a step in the right direction, but more must be done for global acceptance.

What is a problogger?

Blog authors, i.e. bloggers, can be divided into many categories. The most common distinction is based on the number of people who read the author’s blog. On the internet there rarely is a middle ground. So we can break up blog authors into those whose blog is read by thousands of readers, and those whose blog is read by a few. This blog is one of the latter but that does not bother me, I write to express my opinions and that is it.

Blog authors whose blog is read by thousands are a minority. This group of blog authors can be further divided into two separate groups. On the one hand there are what I call subject experts and on the other there are probloggers.

The first group, the subject experts, are what I consider the good guys. They are people who have insights and expertise in a specific subject and write interesting and thought provoking articles. I think they really deserve to have that many followers since the content they write is worth it.

The second group, the probloggers, are the equivalent of a get rich quick scheme salesman. They do not write valuable content. Instead they gloat about how they make six figure incomes by writing online tutorials to teach other aspiring blog authors become popular and rich online just like they did. They also offer personalized consultancy to other blog authors on how to become a problogger too.

If something feels to good to be true, most probably it is not true. Everybody should know this by now. Yet these probloggers still manage to rake in money from people who still think that they can make money online from a blog by writing nonsense. If it sounds similar to a pyramid scheme, you are right.

Two things about probloggers irk me. First, nobody with even the slightest sense of proper manners would boast about how much money s/he is making. Secondly, even if you make a living by writing a blog you don’t run around calling yourself a problogger.

Just like any other pyramid scheme, riches are made only by the few at the top who exploit the naivety of their readership. This is done directly when people pay for consultancy and indirectly when new aspiring bloggers start their own blog and make references to their gurus. Inbound links are the equivalent of virtual money on the internet. There are other ways of doing money too, like for instance selling e-books that cliam to give you step by step instructions to become rich with your own blog. Another method is using problogger conferences during which the few who make money take pictures together to show off on their blogs, whilst the masses pay hard earned money hoping to learn and mingle with the established probloggers.

Why did I write this post? Well, because I think if it only helps a handful of people see things for what they really are this blog post would have achieved its aim.

Part of the Reason Why Chrome Share Is Growing Slowly

Following my “Chrome market share and Matt Cutts” post yesterday I received a tweet from Matt Cutts himself asking me which browser I do use. I replied FF 3.5 and what compelling reason he could give me to use Chrome, since moving from IE to FF was an easy decision since there was a huge leap in quality and user experience.

As usual I kept on thinking on why a user using FF should decide to switch over to Chrome. Granted Chrome has a harder time penetrating the market since the browsers are now more mature. However, as usual there is always room for improvement.

For example, FF sucks up huge amounts of memory for no apparent reason. I usually keep FF open all day and hover between 8 tabs open at a time. Nonetheless this does not justify consuming over 200MB. And no I do not have a single add-on installed or shaky third party plug-in.

Even if that was the case, the browser should take care of that.

So to give Chrome a second chance, since the last time I tried it was months ago, today I decided to learn a bit more about how it works and the motivation behind it. For a quick introduction, this comic book style look at the technology and motivation for Chrome is great.

I agree completely with what the Google guys are trying to do with the web browser. The browser has to behave more like an OS, with proper process and memory management. As they outline, having the browser crash while editing an online document or email is a big deal.

So next, I decided to take Chrome for a spin once again. Plus points, minimalist design, better memory consumption, faster to load. On this last point I would need more time to see how it fares after three months worth of browsing history.

At this point I decided to import the FF3.5 settings, especially the saved passwords. Without those it would be a pain to initially re-enter all passwords I use. So I clicked on the wrench icon, clicked import, chose Firefox along with the option to import passwords. Everything seemed to work fine. I then browsed to one of my daily sites, and the login and password fields remained empty.

Quick search on Google returned “Chrome won’t import passwords from Firefox 3.5” support question. It seems Chrome cannot import passwords when they are saved in the sqlite database used to store FF settings.

Now, since I am a geek and want to try Chrome I will use it anyway, but what about the millions of Firefox users out there. The conversion funnel does not look rosy if after getting a percentage amount of users to download Chrome they discover that their passwords are not available. Those users will uninstall Chrome as quickly as they downloaded it.

This surely is affecting the adoption rate of Chrome. If I were Google I would give it high priority. I think Google Chrome is a great innovative browser so it would be a shame if adoption was suffering cause of a minor glitch in those important early minutes when a user is experimenting with a new product.

Chrome market share and Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts, a huge fan of Chrome, has just released his own website Google Analytics statistics to show that Chrome’s share of his website visitors has climbed. This on the first anniversary of Chrome.

He doesn’t of course base himself on those statistics to say Chrome’s market share is increasing, but quotes figures from Net Applications, StatCounter, and Clicky. They all put Chrome’s share around 3.5%. That’s all good and positive. More competition always leads to better products in the end.

However, I do not agree with Matt Cutts that “That’s pretty good for 12 months”. Why so? Well the Google homepage happens to be one of the most visited sites on the internet, not counting all the other domains, sub-domains, services, and of course YouTube.

Chrome was heavily promoted on these websites and yet after a year only 3.5% of people use it. I personally use Firefox, but do not consider myself a fanboy, in the sense that if something much better pops up I would switch without hesitation.

But it must be said that Firefox have managed the highly improbable with their web browser. Being the underdog at a time when Internet Explorer reigned supreme with over 85% share they steadily ate more of the pie to now being the dominant player putting Internet Explorer in second place.

I agree with Matt Cutts that Chrome is helping drive innovation, such as private browsing and un/dockable tabs, not to mention better speed and secure browsing. But saying 3.5% share is pretty good after a whole year of Google promotion (read millions of visitors) could have only been said by a fanboy

Changing StumbleUpon Password

So you, just like me, want to change your StumbleUpon account password and are experiencing frustration. You logged into your StumbleUpon account and spent a few minutes going through the available options without finding the simple option to change your password.

The simple answer is you cannot find an option if it is not there. StumbleUpon decided that it will provide all the options and settings in your online account profile except changing your password. This is ridiculous.

To change your password you need to download and install the StumbleUpon toolbar in your browser and then from the Tools drop-down menu choose change password. I might be wrong, but to me this seems like a marketing ploy to force users to download and install your toolbar. I for one won’t bother to download and install any toolbar.

I like the whole idea of StumbleUpon and this password changing decision goes against the grain of online communities. First of all, I do not like to load my browser with myriad toolbars, hence the Minimalist Geek, and secondly if I want to change my password while not on my personal computer and haven’t the option to install toolbars, how will I manage to change my password.

Please StumbleUpon listen to your community and let them be free to choose whether to download and install your toolbar. Add the change password option to our online profile.