How to Disable Google Buzz and Turn it Off Completely.

For all those who tried Google Buzz as it launched and burned their finger doing so and now are looking forward to disable Buzz here is how to do it.

Turning Off Buzz is far more difficult than you may think infact it's a nightmare. First it's really hard to find the Turn Off buzz link which is located at the last place the user will look for which is at the very bottom of the page.
Update: Google has now given an option to Disable the Buzz in "Edit Profile" section.

Now that you have found out the link to disable Buzz don't hurry in doing so, as this will mean that your jabbering will still be publicly available and people will still be following you.Go to the Buzz section in your Gmail and delete all the comments and postings you have made.

Update: The "Delete profile and disable Google Buzz completely" option in Edit Profile has been added and will also delete all your post now though I am not sure about the comments.

Remember even after doing so your comments and posts will still be available in the inbox of persons who were following you. And there is nothing you can do about this. Now here's when you realize that the saying that "Quarrels end, but words once spoken never die" is so true (don't know who said it).

Now go to the Buzz section it will show you all the persons that are following you and vice versa. Now you will have to go to each and individual user click on options and select Block User , this will not send them any notification or message but will silently block them from your postings. If you have a huge fan following you have one of a hell task ahead to block them all as there is no simple option to block them all.

Update: Until this morning there was no option in Buzz to block those followers who didn't had any public profile. But now Google had introduced that option finally, hope Google addresses other concerns also quickly.

After you are done with all this you can go and disable Google Buzz by clicking on Turn Off Buzz from the bottom of the page.

Update: Google has now given an option to Disable the Buzz in "Edit Profile" section.

Lets hope that Google will introduce the basic privacy features in Buzz and then I think some of the people who have turned off Google Buzz may turn it on once again though I am not very sure of the later. Share with me what do you think about Google Buzz and do you think it can take place of twitter.

Update: Google has made many settings appear more prominently and has introduced some privacy feature, still long way to go Google.

Google Buzz: Security and Privacy Concerns

There has been a lot of buzz around "Google Buzz" lately. One fine day everyone got this pop-up in their Gmail asking if they would like to enable Google Buzz, now you thought lets be a sport and said yes.There you go, you started following all the persons in your contact list some of whom you don't even remember and may have sent an email or two.

Similarly others also started to follow you, other like the ones you may have seriously messed with and now they have the contact details of all the girls you are following :-P.

On a more serious note this opens up a lot of opportunities for spammers as they can become your follower and then go on spamming your Google Buzz with links to all sort of weird products and services before you can even find out how to block them.

Now I have been a fan of Google especially for their concern and care about user's privacy. They could have done much better than this, at least they could have given an option for the users to choose if they want to allow others to follow them, instead of automatically making them follow you. And you have to go and block each and every user individually to stop them follow you. there is no block all followers options.

Also if you have a follower who doesn't have a public profile there is no way of blocking him as of now, it seems that Google is going to add this option soon.

Basic privacy options are very essential, especially for an application which is integrated in your email. Because here you get a false sense of security and are not very cautious of who all are seeing your daily jabbers. On Facebook and other social networking site at least you know this is visible to all and you behave accordingly.

One more option that Google could have provided in Buzz was to let you have option of whether you want to send your post as an email or not to all your followers. Because if you want to delete a post just after you publish it before anybody to saw it, it's not possible because the post has already been sent to all your follower's Inbox.

The last but the greatest nuisance is that there is no simple way of disabling the Buzz. I had to dig around for quite a sometime after which I was able to disable it. I don't think a general user will be able to do that and may end up having Google Buzz even if he doesn't want it. And again a simple disabling by clicking on Turn Off Buzz link may not be the best way of doing it, as a lot of what you said still remains for public to be seen. And your followers are still following you.
Read my Post on "How to Disable Google Buzz completely and safely".

Google is now trying to patch up the security concerns and add privacy features in Google Buzz, how much and when only time will tell. But one thing is for sure Google has lost trust of many users and they will be shy next time to try out any newly launched Google products. Some may not enable Google Buzz again even after the concerns have been addressed. As they saying goes "Once burned twice shy"

Let me know about your Google Buzz experience and features you think should have been there.