(from an actual Flash show where Chris Wetherell explains the Google Reader - with a wee bit of editing)
See Computer World article, "Google stands firm on Reader sharing as users' ire grows", December 27, 2007, and "Google comes face to Facebook"
See, Google has confused the function of its service that provides news feed and keeps users up to date on changes to blogs and web sites, with that of a social networking site like Facebook. Everyone you've ever named as a Google contact - meaning, everyone in your Gmail address book? I don't know - is apparently automatically spammed with all of the news items you read and all of your favorite web sites. And what is more, people who AREN'T your "contacts" but might like to be have access as well! Apparently on planet Google, reading the morning news over your cup of coffee is a social activity in which all Googleans must share.
This article, "Google's quest for the elusive talent algorithm", and this one, "Old Fuddy-Duddy fights back over Google Sacking", explains Google's culture. ;)
For more on Planet Google's unearthly "culture", see GoogleEvil.html Firing Brian Reid was a serious strategic mistake as well as a typical Googlism; the man almost certainly saved Google tons of money by keeping their corporate feet on the ground. Apparently Googleans are not equipped to understand, and they resented it. To be fair, they also took issue with his diabetes, and this was only the beginning of their efforts to eliminate people with diabetes.
Google's home planet even has its own Googlean language. What's "granular" mean? "Yesterday, Google responded on the company blog dedicated to Reader. 'We're looking at ways to make sharing more granular and flexible,' acknowledged Chrix Finne, the Google spokesman who blogs about Reader. " Meaning, he explained, that you might be able to not "share" with a few select potential new friends.
or "The very first post in reply to the announcement (full thread here)
shows one of the key things wrong with this feature: no granularity. ", or "I prefer more
granularity in choosing who has automatic access to my shared
items." And, "I’m going to take #2: that the Google Reader team screwed up here and needs to
implement GPC as soon as possible. What’s GPC? Granular Privacy Controls."
See, the way you recognize a Googlean is their inability to speak English.
Nobody on Planet Earth wants "granular privacy controls". There is no place for some weird sort of partial privacy controls. We want Google to let its news feed service be for READING THE NEWS! Social networking does not have some place on a news and favorte web site tracking site! I don't know about you all, but when I want to share a news story, I use that ol' dinosaur, e-mail, and send it specifically to who I want to send it to. If my family got spammed every time I read a news item or an updated web site, they'd block my gmail address! And all my other e-mail addresses as well. And even I don't want to share everything I look at on the Internet with my family, not to mention my employer, the clergy at my church.... And noone in my family will visit any web site that collects personal information and shares it with others. I mean, certainly Google ought to be able to understand that, since it fires its senior executives for having diabetes and wants to establish a genetic database to weed out people with that sort of common genetic disorders, as part of its corporate campaign to eliminate evil.
On the other hand, probably not. You have to look at it from the perspective of an entire planet of beings who think reading the news and tracking web sites is a social networking activity to be shared with everyone one knows and everyone who would like to know you. Googleans are way too collectively oriented to have children who might one day have asthma or diabetes. What is more, who who does not atleast have genes for such ailments in their family would bookmark or track web sites and news articles about these common disorders?
Apparently Facebook protects our privacy better and with less granularity than Google does, so if we wanted to spam our families, employers, potential employers, clergy, friends, and casual contacts and invite encounters with various online stalkers and criminals, we'd just join Facebook.