No, I'm still not going to use it.

[deird_lj]

I think I've decided that, when it comes to companies on the internet doing things:

1) they will inevitably screw up horrifically and make the world hate them (at least briefly).

2) their level of awesomeness should be decided not by whether they screw up (since that's inevitable) but by how they react to the world suddenly hating them.


Amazon generally doesn't react well. They tend to either come up with frantic excuses, or ignore the problem and hope it will go away.

Live Journal backpedals. Delicious sends you support emails instructing you in ways you can fix it yourself. Facebook ignores it. AO3 fixes it instantly, and sends you a reply telling you all about it and apologising profusely.


And Google? Screwed up this week. Many people on the internets are extremely annoyed about Buzz.

But... they reacted pretty well, really. Not brilliantly - but a very angry post has already been downgraded from a "Fuck You Google" to "Screw You Google", based on Google's response to her complaints.

So I think Google can still be considered reasonably awesome, all things considered.

Comments

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I'm still miffed that "turn off Buzz" doesn't actually mean "turn off Buzz", though. Or even more obviously, there should be a "turn on Buzz - here's what'll happen" button before the damn thing even shows up. But hey, they practically own us all at this point anyway so I'm happy they at least let us have any control whatsoever, even if they have to be reminded now and then...

[deird1]

Or even more obviously, there should be a "turn on Buzz - here's what'll happen" button before the damn thing even shows up.

Definitely. These things should be opt-in, not opt-out.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't understand why that's so difficult for companies to understand: that people don't want their personal stuff made public without even being asked. That most people don't consider that a service.

(I mean, we know it's all out there somewhere anyway and we all have individual files at Google HQ, but Christ, they could at least pretend.)

[naatz.livejournal.com]

.......I was never aware that mine was activated before I saw your comments. Where do I turn it off??? >_____<

|Meduza|

[next_to_normal]

I wanted to be mad at Google, really I did. But I can't go more than 5 minutes without either checking my email or looking something up, so I decided to let that one go.

Unless something really bad happens to me because of Buzz (I already noted that I was automatically following someone I really dislike, but I fixed that), in which case I will do what any self-respecting American would do - sue the bastards. :)

[deird1]

Given that they added friends automatically based on who you have the most email contact with, I had a high probability of automatically friending my cyberstalker. :(

(Thankfully that didn't happen. Otherwise this entry would have been filled with much more rage.)

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Yep. Sounds like an accurate assessment.

When I worked in customer service, I learned pretty quickly that fuck-ups are gonna happen. But you can retain a customer by handling it well, apologizing, and fixing it rather than flailing.

Gotta admit, much as I'm madly in love with Google (and Gmail), I'm not at all interested in Buzz. I barely use my Facebook. Why would I use the Google version of it? I kinda wish there were a way to wipe it from showing up on my Gmail page, but I'm not gonna stress about it. The privacy issues don't affect me in any major way so the most I'm gonna do is grumble a little.

[deird1]

I kinda wish there were a way to wipe it from showing up on my Gmail page,

Ooh! I know this one!
It's right down the bottom in teeny tiny letters that says "turn off Buzz" (or something like that).

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Eureka!

Thanks muchly. :)

[immer-am-lesen.livejournal.com]

Google? Buzz?
Please to be explaining for those who have no idea what's been happening online lately? :-/

[deird1]

Ah, you people who don't have Gmail...

It's like Facebook, kinda, but done through Google.
The thing is, everyone with Gmail was signed up for it automatically, and had their "most frequent" contacts automatically friended - thus putting a number of people back in contact with abusive ex-husbands, stalkers, and similar.

Also, it used real names (which some people don't want revealed to all their email contacts) and let you see "friends of friends" (which could, for instance, let your boss see precisely who you hang out with in your spare time). And it didn't tell us it was going to do any of this.

People have been annoyed and ranty all weekend, and Google are frantically back-pedalling.

[immer-am-lesen.livejournal.com]

Hey, I have a gmail account! No one is my 'friend' on it though?
Do you mean like the signing in to iGoogle thing, where it links iGoogle with Blogger with Youtube, etc?
Thay annoys me- if I've been using my blog, it then signs me in to iGoogle, which I don't want. Particularly odd, since my Gmail isn't the account linked to my blog.
Sometimes I just shake my head and wonder..

[taiba.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in it over FB because I know Google to be more stable. FB is starting to really shit me, and I'm sick of constant whole-site changes which don't seem to do anything to make it run more smoothly.

[taiba.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the first thing I did when it appeared was to change my profile name to no longer be my full name.

[roccondilrinon.livejournal.com]

Isn't this something of a general principle in systems design and engineering? Nothing can be completely foolproof because nothing is beyond the ingenuity of a complete fool. Ergo, the quality of a system isn't so much in that it goes wrong occasionally (so long as that occasionally is at about the background level for similar systems) but how well it copes with things going wrong.

That's one thing I like about how Apple runs things, both in terms of its products and its customer service. If a program crashes, the OS automatically isolates it and shuts it down without letting it affect the rest of the system. I've had a total of two kernel panics in the time I've owned my Mac and those were both before I installed Leopard. This applies to sub-programs as well — if the Flash plugin crashes, which is reportedly the most common crash on Macs, then Flash and only Flash will be shut down. The browser won't hang, much less the system, and you'll just get a tame, safe little error box. In terms of customer service, if something breaks, or stops working, you can bet they'll take it, have a look at it, do their damnedest to fix it, replace it if they can't, and probably (unless they have to order replacement parts in) all on the same day. One time I took it in to have something completely unrelated looked at, and they noticed a little crack on my palmrest. Half an hour later I had a free new palmrest installed.

[riccadonna.livejournal.com]

I'm running to check my Google situation!
LOVE your icon.

[gillo]

Thank you so much! I would never have found that on my own.

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

LOL, FB is so obsessed with doing minor tinkerings to the site just to make teens and adults all over the world go nuts once it's different. I remember when one of the first 'new' Facebook designs happened, and people were yelling, and threatening to kill themselves...yeah.