SEOBuzzzy bytes the Beast

Buzzzy bytes the Beast

Recently everybody has been abuzz with concern over Google’s presumptious approach to privacy, particularly since the launch of Google Buzz, which automatically co-opted gmail contacts as a user’s social graph and merged their personal and professional worlds into one network overnight. Now, new advanced search features from Buzzzy, mean you can practically investigate the issue for yourself.

People of all ages and nationalities raised the alarm: 24 year-old Harvard Law School student, Eva Hibnick filed a class action suit on behalf of all 31 million Gmail users and an Australian TV channel stoked the fires of controversy, by airing a video which labelled Google, a Hungry Beast. Privacy advocates, Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) also pounced on Google‘s cavalier and poorly defined attitude to online privacy saying the service “violated user expectations, diminished user privacy, contradicted Google’s privacy policy, and may have violated Federal wiretap laws.”

THE BEAST FILE: GOOGLE (‘HUNGRY BEAST’, ABC TV) from Hungry Beast on Vimeo.

Yet despite some sensational headlines, the online community is divided on the issue of online privacy (the nuances of which are beyond the scope of this article). Other search engines and email services such as Bing, Yahoo and AOL collect and store the same data and whilst they remain noticeably quiet on the subject, Google is often at the forefront of privacy initiatives, with innovations such as allowing web users to opt out of being tracked by Google analytics.

Well, whatever side of the privacy fence you are sitting on, you can now investigate the nuances of this complex issue for yourself. Buzzzy have added new search operators to their index of Google Buzz content so that content can be filtered by Google profile information, such as company, username and job title. You can see the full set of new parameters in the screenshot below.

buzzzyadv.png

I decided to see if man could bite a dog, so had a look at what Google employees thought about their rivals. Being a snoop led me down a rabbit hole of queries and spurious conclusions, but it was heartwarming to stumble upon evidence that the company was not run by androids at all.

Instead, what i found was that Google employees are magnanimous about Twitter, bitchy about Bing and united in their love of beer.

So, erm, that would make “the Beast” much like myself then…… RAWR!

P.S. Buzzzy is a product of WorkDigital, who are part owned by Incisive Media, owner of SearchEngineWatch.com
P.P.S. RAWR means i love you in dinosaur

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