Last February I blogged a bit about privacy issues with Google Buzz.
While there was a fair amount of interest, at the time, the general response was “meh.”
Well, It’s been a year, and the chips have fallen.
After a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission, Google reached a settlement, including independent privacy audits for the next twenty years.
Look, I’ve been at companies before with a “save the world” mission, I understand the pace of development, and I know how hard it can be to take a few minutes to look around, think, and say something like “Wait … this feature has some unintended consequences.”
Likewise, we don’t know if anybody at Google said that — a few might have. Perhaps they were transferred and the project went forward without them.
I wasn’t in their shoes, and it is easy to nitpick after the fact.
Still, I think it’s fair to say: Privacy is a big deal, and so it testing for unintended consequences of the specifications.
As for “meh”, it turns out … not so much.
