One of the things I hate about Gmail is that it tries to leverage synergies. Not across the enterprise, mind you, but always across my address book. The address book that it stuck everyone you ever exchanged emails with on. The address book that suddenly saw your stupid status messages and cluttered your buddy list. And now the address book that automatically hooks together everyone’s intertubular facetweets into one big list and sticks it in your face. It’s very involved to opt-out of any of those things, and while I understand that that may be good for the adoption of those features, it may not in fact be good for, you know, my efficiency. Style of working and organizing. Blood pressure. Happiness.
Some people play tennis. The Gmail team erodes the human comfort zone.
I concur. I was alarmed to find that I was automatically (and, I think, visibly) following various contacts, ranging from years-ago exes to recently-met professional acquaintances. I’d prefer to exercise a little more discretion in the social signals I send. So, Buzz has precipitated a migration back to desktop apps, at least for me. Can’t trust the Goog!
By Jim · 2010.02.12 23:21
I’ve actually got people on my gmail contact list that I don’t know! I think from reply-alls I may have done on other people’s emails.
Anyway, they stopped automatically adding people to your contact list a while ago, actually.
By Sandra · 2010.02.13 00:03
I know they did, but they seem to have turned that back on recently! I have a bunch of people on there that sent me their first support mail during the past few weeks, and I never add contacts. I can’t even find the setting to turn it off again.
By Jesper · 2010.02.13 00:11