February 21, 2010 28 Comments

Google Buzz Messes With Your Google Profile

My friend Marsha Collier pointed out something really important for you to know about, if you’re dabbling with Google Buzz. If you disable Google Buzz, Google cans your Google Profile.

So what the heck? That doesn’t sound useful.

Related posts:

  1. Get Your Google Profile Tidied Up
  2. Fix Your Facebook Profile Now
  3. Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future
  4. Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You
  5. Google Office

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  • levimontgomery

    To be honest, if it's a choice between having a Google profile with Buzz, or not having Buzz and losing the profile, I'll give up the profile. Which is exactly what I did.

    Now all I have to worry about is people who a) have Google Buzz themselves, and b) have my contact information, because as far as I know, that means Google is going to make my information public anyway.

  • Mike Piper

    I'm actually excited to hear this! I'm more than happy to get rid of my Google profile. I just didn't know there was a way to do it.

  • http://www.hollywebster.com/ Holly Webster

    I believe it's possible to choose on a post-by-post and service-by-service basis whether or not to display information on your Google profile, although I haven't played around with it too much yet (and the documentation could certainly be a bit clearer). Anyway, theoretically at least, you don't have to disable Buzz to prevent it from posting content to your Google profile. It would be nice if there were a global “never post anything to my profile” setting though — if this exists I haven't found it.

  • http://www.mattsingley.com/leading mattsingley

    I turned off Buzz a bit ago, my profile seems to still be okay. Buzz was like a social media parasite, it pretty much invaded every inch of anything that I had related to Google, very, very glad to have it turned off.

  • http://twitter.com/Iconic88 Iconic88

    Oh dear.

    Thanks for the headsup Chris. This “just isn't cricket” as they'd say in Commonwealth countries.

    Another major feature Google is missing in buzz is sharing abilities. It's one thing to share what you find via Buzz to your networks but what about the ability to share out of Buzz?

    Looks like someone has come to the party to steal the DJ.

  • http://twitter.com/dariasteigman Daria Steigman

    Hi Chris,

    Yes, I read this somewhere else the other day. Very nasty. But I did figure out that you can disable Buzz and keep your Google profile. That's what I've done for now. As a result, the Google Buzz portion of my profile only contains my shared Reader links — and that's what I'm sharing them for anyway so that's okay.

  • http://twitter.com/CraigFifield Craig Fifield

    I noticed this as well Chris. It feels a tad sneaky to me but it could be that they went mucked up the profile code to work with Buzz and don't want to revert it or fix it.

  • RockfordWeb

    I think that you can only win to have the profile. Google always rewards those that stay in the system.

  • http://ariwriter.com Ari Herzog

    Although, you can safely delete your profile and then recreate it, minus Buzz. See http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to…

    Poor engineering from Google.

  • http://www.moviemarketingmadness.com/blog Chris Thilk

    I don't think that's actually true. I turned off Buzz less than 24 hours after it became available for me but my Google Profile is intact. May want to do a little bit of digging into other causes. Or maybe this is a bug with some profiles.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Wayne-Schulz/531173044 Wayne Schulz

    A more disturbing question – what happens if Google sacks your profile for a terms of service violation?

    I'm concerned about (when available) starting to Buzz from my Google Apps account and having some unforseen issue with my Buzz account feed cause Google to shut down my profile and potentially my Apps account.

    This may seem a little paranoid – but I'm concerned enough that I think I'll avoid any public buzz from Google Apps (when available).

  • http://www.lambcreek.com/ Peter Lamb

    I can understand Marsha's chagrin over Google Buzz. She's right on that point. However, I am going to keep my toes in Buzz and give them healthy time to mature. My bet is Buzz will excel at this in the long run. That momentum should help propel small fries like LambCreek with enhanced online marketing exposure, eclipsing those of Twitter and Facebook.

  • http://bloggersmarket.com/ Jeffrey

    I never did catch the magic of Google Buzz. Talk about fodder for a post!
    Man, …….. someone was “Buzzed” when they came up with the idea!

  • http://www.ivanwalsh.com Ivan Walsh

    To be clear: if you click Turn Off Buzz at the footer of Gmail, you're Google Profile is NOT deleted.

  • natfinn

    I didn't even see the “turn buzz off” section.

    I just filtered all the buzz data. What I didn't realize was how much Google Buzz messed with your “sent” and “all mail.” profile. It's loading up my inbox with data.

    That better mean that they're givin' me more inbox space to deal with this or I'm resorting to the “turn buzz off” link until such time as they sort the buzzkill out.

  • http://www.labelprintingservice.com Label Printers

    Thanks Ari Herzog for how to disable Google Buzz. I'll try it.

  • annejaa

    Yes true and that's what people don't want any mess up with their private profile..I got enabled Buzz in my profile but i don't want it so i deleted my profile.That's the one option i had left because i don't want to share my profile with others.
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  • Victoria

    Hi everyone,

    My name is Victoria and I handle Communications for Google Buzz. It is actually possible to turn off Buzz without deleting your Google profile. Here's what you'd need to do:

    1. Disconnect any connected sites (via Buzz in Gmail)
    2. Choose “Do not show Google Buzz in Gmail” (via the Buzz tab in Gmail Settings)

    Your Google Profile will remain intact. Note that if you have a Google Profile, other people may choose to follow it, which is their choice. But since you're not sharing any items or using Buzz this is effectively meaningless. If at a later point in time, you decide to start publicly sharing content via Google Buzz or Google Reader, they would see it under their Buzz tab. If you'd like to hide the list of people following you from your Profile, you can do this via your Google Profile settings.

    Hope this is helpful to those of you who are not interested in Buzz but want to keep your Google profiles!

    Victoria

  • marsha_collier

    I posted a follow up on my blog. Google contacted me. It seems you can have your Google profile if you disable Buzz from your Gmail. The only place that causes the loss of your profile is if you disable it from your profile.(I think).
    This is pretty bad planning and lousy documentation. At least Google is considering making the Profile the default view on Google Profile.
    I will be giving it more time before I remove Google Buzz because it may morph into something useful soon.

  • jhonywillsh

    If you’re not using Buzz, then there’s no reason to block anyone because you’re not posting anything. Buzz is vastly superior to Twitter and I hope Twitter dies a miserable death now that Buzz is around. They screwed up at first, but the privacy controls now are perfectly adequate.

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    No longer does Buzz automatically follow a handful of your most frequent contact instead, it suggests to you people you might want to follow, letting the user make the decision instead of Google.

  • Chris

    I went through the process of completely disabling Buzz and deleting my profile…and then re-creating my profile from scratch. The good news is that Buzz is now wiped from my Gmail experience and my profile, and my new profile carries the same URL as it did before (so your domain re-direct would work as it always has). However, my new Buzz-less profile still had a huge, garish “Follow Chris” button on it. That wasn't there before Buzz. I really despise it, and can't get rid of it. I pray that Google will allow us to revert to our old profile styles and eventually provide the option to have a totally separate interface to Buzz apart from Gmail and our Google profiles.

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