A Google executive told an audience of managers from several federal agencies yesterday that they should expect Google Buzz to be in their enterprise GMail accounts within the next few months.
This is the first time sine the launch that we have heard a public statement about Google Buzz entering the enterprise. It comes as Google Buzz asked users once again again to double-check that Buzz is set up just the way they like it.
Google Buzz is built into GMail, providing a real-time activity stream. At its launch, The service stood considerable criticism from people who came to find that they were inadvertently exposing their email accounts to the public. Opting out was not entirely clear. In response, Google updated Google Buzz to make it easier to opt-out but for many it did not go far enough. Criticism continued and within four days has changed its policies, replacing opt-out features, most of all, replacing auto-following with suggestions for people to follow.
Yesterday, according to The Hill, Mike Bradshaw, Google’s head of federal sales said at a cloud computing event in Washington, DC that the issues with Google Buzz have been corrected: “We got a bit of a ding by the press,” he said. “Fortunately we were able to correct it and in four days changed the policies.”
That’s one way to look at it. He portrays the incident as a public relations issue, not as a flaw deep in the product that raises considerable privacy concerns.
Privacy issues are of primary concern to federal agencies that have been concerned about how information can be protected in a cloud computing environment. The issue has caused some hesitation and slowing in adoption.
We expect that Google will need to push its education efforts into high gear for Google Buzz. Customers will have to be convinced that their enterprise GMail accounts are entirely protected from any inadvertent transparencies that could expose a person’s account.
Opting out will just not fly in the enterprise.
