Google did something significantly worse -- and spent ages apologizing for it and never really recovered from the reputation hit, and I suspect that negative impressions Buzz gave people were a contributing factor to G+'s total failure.

> and I suspect that negative impressions Buzz gave people were a contributing factor to G+'s total failure.

Absolutely.

Google+ became really nice towards the end, but HN kept hating it, and I guess partly because of Buzz.

Wow...

> Google Buzz publicly disclosed (on the user's Google profile) a list of the names of Gmail contacts that the user has most frequently emailed or chatted with.

Google Buzz is something you definitely don't want to be similar to.

The disaster that was Google Buzz has left a thick bureaucratic scar tissue designed to prevent something like that from happening again.

Here’s an old article about it: https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/26/technology/google_privacy/i...

I suspect TripleByte is about to learn some similar lessons.