What's buzzing about Google Buzz

BANGALORE, INDIA: Finally, we have Google responding back to competition with just a Buzz on Gmail – taking on the likes of Facebook, Twitter. While a lot of users, who have stated using it, find it familiar or 'yet another thing'.

According to Google, this new way to start conversations will help people share updates, photos, videos and more. They claim the biggest advantage is that Buzz is built right into Gmail, so there's nothing to set up and the users are automatically following the people they email and chat with the most.

However, Google is still in the process of rolling out Buzz to everyone. While the users who already have got the tab in their Gmail panel, notice that they get automatically connected to their connections in the Google talk. And as the industry jargon goes, this is not about being in touch with but it is following the person.

The initial reviews from the users suggests Buzz to be similar to FriendFeed. Paul Buchheit, creator and lead developer of Gmail and co-founder of FriendFeed, noted in his public page of Buzz (http://www.google.com/buzz/111732375221065535359/brG1D6P9SWv/This-seems-vaguely-familiar) “This seems vaguely familiar...”.

Elaborates the article in Tech Crunch, “Buzz only consumes communications from outside Google in a one-way fashion. You can see other people’s Tweets, for instance, but you can’t Tweet back to them. And those Tweets definitely don’t come in realtime either. There is a noticeable lag.”

As soon as Google launched Buzz, there was a blog posted by Edward Ho, Tech Lead, Google Buzz on their website talking about the new product and new wave of communication.

It stated, “Five years ago, Gmail was just email. Later we added chat and then video chat, both built right in, so people had choices about how to communicate from a single browser window. Today, communication on the web has evolved beyond email and chat. This new social sharing is valuable, but it means there's a lot more stuff to sort through, and it's harder to get past status updates and engage in meaningful discussions.”

With people getting habituated to tweeting on anything from anywhere and poking in from Facebook, Google will be keenly watched for the new advances it makes in this world of real-time communication.

After all, no one expects a 'buzz in the teacup'; Google too knows that.