16.2.10

Google Buzz: Economic Surveillance - Buzz Off! ...

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In February 2010, Google introduced a new social networking service called Buzz. Buzz is directly connected to GMail, Google%u2019s webmail-platform. Google%u2019s introduction of Buzz is an attempt to gain importance in the social networking sites-market that has been dominated by Facebook and Twitter. In February 2010, Facebook was ranked number 2 and Twitter number 12 in the list of the most accessed web platforms, whereas Google%u2019s own social networking platform Orkut, which is only very popular in Brazil, was at number 52 (data source: http://alexa.com, the top 500 sites on the web, February 14, 2010). Popular social networking platforms attract millions of users, who upload and share personal information that provides data about their consumption preferences. Therefore commercial social networking sites are keen on storing, analyzing, and selling individual and aggregated data about user preferences and user behaviour to advertising clients in order to accumulate capital. Google is itself a main player in the business of online advertising. One can therefore assume that Google considers Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms that attract many users, as competitors, and that as a result of this competitive situation Google has introduced Buzz. In 2009, GMail had approximately 150 million users (see http://www.tech24hours.com/2009/09/number-of-gmail-users-worldwide-as-of.html, accessed on February 14, 2010), which explains that Google integrated Buzz into GMail in order to start from a solid foundation of potential users........

In December 2009, Google%u2019s CEO Eric Schmidt commented about online privacy: %u201CIf you have something that you do not want anyone to know, maybe you should not be doing it in the first place%u201D (, accessed on February 14, 2010). This statement is an indication that Google or at least its most important managers and shareholders do not value privacy very highly.......

Oh dear, Buzz should at least allow an opt in policy

Posted via web from take notes ♫♪♪ ♫♫

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