Quote:
Originally Posted by
JT82 
I'm curious to know how this differs from, say, Facebook, whose site setup seems to change on a nearly monthly basis (despite the negative feedback consistently voiced by its users) and whose privacy settings are exceedingly nebulous and complicated to navigate.
Isn't it just more of the same when it comes to online social networking?
The difference is that Google's online suite of services (docs, maps, gmail, etc.) aren't targeted at the primary social networking demographic; the people who use them aren't there for social networking. Joe the Plumber, who signed up for free e-mail, had his entire private address book broadcast to the world without his consent or knowledge. That makes him mad.
While Mark Zuckerman is also pure evil, and Facebook is an equally large pile of dogshit, he is at least smart enough to know that his target market (attention-starved 15 to 25 year olds) doesn't really care that much about privacy, especially since they're already on facebook to advertise their personal lives to the internet. Consider also that these people have nowhere else to go (myspace? xanga? Not a chance).
That doesn't justify what Facebook did recently, but it does explain the difference in outcry.