The Google powerhouse churns out applications and systems at an unrelenting pace. It has

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now launched a service to bring social updates such as photos and weblinks into Gmail and some Google mobile products, in a challenge to Facebook and other social media sites where people go to check up on their friends.

Dubbed ‘Google Buzz’, the service allows users to post and browse content from people they regularly communicate with over Gmail in a new stream-like interface. People can choose to follow content from other Google users and the search engine tries to figure out what's relevant, surfacing some updates directly into the user’s inbox. Users can go through the stream of information in the left hand menu under the inbox. Beginning soon, they will also be able to post and view updates from Google's mobile website or Buzz mobile software application. So, what’s up with Buzz?

Given so many features and the link with Gmail, there are both privacy and functionality issues with Buzz. The danger in creating an instant social network around email contacts, as Buzz does, is that the boundaries between what is private and what is public are not always clear. So, what’s the problem? The main problem is that Buzz lets Gmail subscribers create profiles, like Facebook, and send internet-wide blog postings, like Twitter. One issue of concern is a feature called “auto follow” that automatically sets up people you e-mail and chat with the most as followers of your Buzz postings. Thus, the people you follow and who follow you, are made public by default on your Google profile page, but are based on people who you email the most in private.

Historically, in internet terms, users have been known to accept and say yes by clicking on the ‘OK’ button to defaults. What added fuel to fire was the fact that Google Buzz was launched with auto follow enabled by default. What is worse is that disabling it required several steps.

As the auto-follow feature had already set the water boiling for some people concerned with their privacy, Google last week announced it would revise that feature by displaying a pre-checked box, followed by two lines of text describing the auto follow function and allowing first time users to disable it by unchecking the box.

But this was not enough and Google sent out another revision to its settings during the weekend. This time it said first time users would be presented with a series of pre-checked boxes, each showing a photo and name of a specific person Google suggests the user follows, chosen from those they e-mail and chat with “the most,” says company spokeswoman Victoria Katsarou. Users would not be able to use Buzz unless they make some choices at that point: affirm the full list, disable the entire list, or select specific individuals from the list to follow. “We're prompting you to make the decision to say ‘Yes, we want to follow these people,’” she says. The new revision, dubbed ‘auto-suggest,’ would go live soon.

Some critics have been calling for Google to go a step further and assume Gmail users do not want Buzz's auto follow feature enabled unless they specifically request it. Nicholas Carlson, senior editor at Silicon Alley Insider, says this could be done easily by leaving boxes unchecked. Users would retain the privilege to opt in.

Beyond the auto follow feature, Buzz's tight integration with Gmail and other free Google online services has raised a storm of complaints on blogs and social networks. Some users have complained about their lists of contacts being spread too widely without their permission, introducing the potential to disrupt business and personal confidences.

In its blog post during the weekend, Google acknowledged the problems. “We quickly realised that we didn't get everything quite right,” wrote Todd Jackson, Google's product manager for Gmail and Buzz. “We're very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We'll continue to do so.”

It turns out there is another privacy flaw in Google Buzz that can expose private email addresses to everyone who follows you. Google Buzz borrows the @reply convention from Twitter so that if you want to reply to someone or direct a comment to them you simply put the @ sign in front of their name. Google auto-suggests names from your contact list as you start typing. Normally, this doesn’t cause any problems if you select the Gmail account or chat name associated with that person’s public profile. It ends up posting their name, and not their email address. But if you select a name or account that is not public, Buzz will fill in with their private email. What this means is that the many people following you on Buzz can see a private email address in your comment even if they had no direct connection to the private email contact. They can now send the private contact unsolicited emails and spam. Just multiply this type of potential exposure by the millions of people and you can see why it is a hole that should be patched up quickly.

There are still several flaws in the new Google Buzz exposing the common users to inadvertently reveal more that he or she would care to do. But one good things is that Google is reacting, and may step in to address all the issues soon. Buzz may then become a parallel universe to Facebook and Twitter.

The writer is a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA and also knowledge editor at Financial Chronicle