Google Reader Becomes Holiday Snitch

Google's orchestrating its own Facebook-Beacon-esque fiasco with its latest addition to Google Reader. Users are miffed (to put it lightly) that their shared feeds were suddenly broadcast to anybody they'd had a conversation with via Google Talk or Gmail chat.

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The user complaints have been pouring in to Google Groups ever since users realized that what they assumed to be private information was now public information to all of their Google Talk contacts. There's a nice rundown of those complaints at a ouch-inducing one coming the weekend before Christmas:

"This is going to sound like hyperbole, but this new feature has actually RUINED CHRISTMAS for my family! I sent a share a few days ago that I thought would only go to a few politically-like-minded friends. I didn't realize that because I had chatted with him in GChat, it would also go to my brother, who is of a different political persuasion. When he received it, he sent a snide, angry email about it to a large group of our family members….He called me a nasty name and told me that if I can't take a little ribbing, maybe we shouldn't talk anymore at all, including at Christmas Eve dinner. My whole family has taken sides over this divisive political issue, and several of them are not speaking."

Google's response to the complaints wasn't taken well, either. A spokesperson, signing his post only "Graham," made Google's official stance that the complaints were coming from a "small subset" of users and most people seemed to like the new shared feature. They'd work on it, but it being the holidays and all, improvements might come a little slower than usual.

Graham noted

In other words, it's the users' fault, not ours that your feeds were shared with people you didn't want to see them. Somehow I think that's not going to fly with incensed users. But if they don't like it, there's an option.

Or delete your entire shared items history. You know, after your mom or your competitors have already had access to it. The only way to block a contact from viewing the shared items is to delete them from your contacts list entirely, an option one disgruntled user called "insane."