Why I’m Not All aTwitter Over Google Buzz

Google Buzz is getting a lot of attention lately, but I don’t care. I’m not even going to test drive it.

I see Google as a search engine. Nothing more. It’s not a barometer of my social connections. It isn’t a metric for my social graph. And I don’t care how many people are excited about Buzzworthy content. Quite frankly, I think the name Google Buzz is rather ridiculous. Yahoo! has used the name Buzz for its social bookmarking service for years so Google is a little bit late to the party here.

About the only thing unique about Google Buzz is the fact that it is integrated with Gmail. If you are not a Gmail user then you can’t use Google Buzz. I’m not a Gmail user.

Yes, I have a Gmail account because Google automatically gives you one when you establish a Google account. But I don’t use it. I do use Google AdSense, I use Google Analytics, I use Google AdWords when I feel like spending money. I use Google Webmaster Tools, Google Reader and several other Google services as well. But I don’t use Gmail.

The reason I don’t use Gmail is because I already have several e-mail addresses and I check them all through MS Outlook. I really don’t have an interest in web-based e-mail. I still have my Yahoo! mail account from several years ago, but I only check it once every two or three months. Gmail doesn’t interest me.

Google Buzz incorporates a social network using your Gmail friends, Google Reader friends, Picasa friends and YouTube friends. Personally, I prefer Flickr to Picasa. I have a Picasa account, but I only have two or three photos there. The rest of them are at Flickr. I love YouTube, but I don’t need Google Buzz.

If I want to share a YouTube video then I use Twitter or Facebook. I have deleted a lot of my Google Reader blog subscriptions because many of the bloggers I follow are on Twitter. Therefore, Google Reader is a secondary service for me  now while Twitter is my primary subscription service. Since I don’t use Gmail, I don’t have any Gmail friends; therefore, using Google Buzz would be like swatting a single fly with a 20-pound sledgehammer.

I took Google Wave for a test drive. It’s a great tool. But none of my friends were using it so it was useless. Google Buzz is just like that. If you don’t have any Gmail friends or none of your social friends are using the tool then it’s useless.

One more reason I don’t use Gmail and have no interest in Google Buzz is because I want to maintain at least some level of privacy. If Google is the only service I use then one company will have all the information they want about me and potentially everyone in the world as well. By spreading myself around to various services – YouTube for video sharing, Google for advertising, Yahoo! for photo sharing, Bing for certain types of searches, Twitter for one-to-many communication and Facebook for social networking, I can better manage a level of privacy I hope to enjoy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not particularly excited about Google Buzz. It just doesn’t get my Twitter wings a-flappin’.

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