It *was* a big deal

Last February I blogged a bit about privacy issues with Google Buzz.

While there was a fair amount of interest, at the time, the general response was "meh."

Well, It's been a year, and the chips have fallen.

After a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission, Google reached a settlement, including independent privacy audits for the next twenty years.

Look, I've been at companies before with a "save the world" mission, I understand the pace of development, and I know how hard it can be to take a few minutes to look around, think, and say something like "Wait ... this feature has some unintended consequences."

Likewise, we don't know if anybody at Google said that -- a few might have. Perhaps they were transferred and the project went forward without them.

I wasn't in their shoes, and it is easy to nitpick after the fact.

Still, I think it's fair to say: Privacy is a big deal, and so it testing for unintended consequences of the specifications.

As for "meh", it turns out ... not so much.