11 February 2010

Google Buzz... just means like more s*** I gotta do now.

In one of the innumerable great scenes from my favourite movie ever, Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me, Harry Dean Stanton's character says in world-weary fashion, "it just means like... more shit I gotta do now".

Google Buzz (added to my gmail account without consultation or agreement from me) falls into that category of annoying stuff that doesn't really do anything useful apart from create a possible security risk.

Here's a good summary by maverick accountant Dennis Howlett (via Richard Murphy) of why Buzz is a piece of crap.

It's basically an aggregator for loads of stuff from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, blogs etc for people who might be in your gmail account. And they can add new posts as well (a bit like Facebook). The problem is that it doesn't ask you whether you want to be added to everyone else's aggregator - so if you are running an anonymous blog out of Blogger (owned by Google for several years) you might find that it's suddenly not so anonymous anymore. Which could be mildly interesting. In my case, I turned the f***er off. (You can do that by finding the tiny link at the bottom of the gmail screen that says "turn off Buzz".)

I'm sure that one day Google will be revealed as a huge scam to get everybody's bank account details (e.g. through Paypal) and then shut down the entire world banking system by emptying everyone's account at once. If you had access to enough banking info you really could do this, and be out of there with trillions of dollars before anyone had a chance to change their passwords. Alternatively you could use it as the ultimate tool of economic sabotage. It would make the credit crunch look like a minor clerical error. Jesus Christ.

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