Thursday, September 19, 2013

Google Buzz's last-gasp addition to your Google Drive

This QuickTip is about a file that Google Buzz is going to put into your Google Drive, as part of it's final turn-off routine, for all Buzz accounts that haven't yet been deleted.



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Google Buzz was one of Google's early-and-short-lived social networking attempts, but was used by some bloggers looking to promote their blogs.



It was closed down in October 2011

I haven't seen it published in any of the Google blogs that I follow, but recently I was sent an email saying that the last step in the close-down will happen on or after 17 July 2013, when Google will save a copy of the Buzz posts from any remaining active Buzz accounts to the account-holders Google Drive

There will be two types of file, and the files won't count against your storage limits.   They say:
  1. The first will be private, only accessible to you, and have a snapshot of the Google Buzz public and private posts that you wrote.
  2. The second will have a copy of your Google Buzz public posts. It will be visible to anyone with the link, unless you change it later, and may appear in search results and on your Google Profile (if you've linked to your Buzz posts).   Any existing links to your Google Buzz content will redirect to this file.

Something to be aware of, if you used Buzz to make controversial comments:   Comments that you made on other users' posts will be saved to those users' files. After the file-download described here id done, the other user can change the sharing settings of those files, if they choose to do so. And if they do, and if you have commented on another person's private post, that person could choose to make that post and its comments public.   To remove the chance of that happening, you could delete all your Buzz content well before 17 July 2013

The Buzz-download Google Drive files will only contain comments from users who had enabled Google Buzz.  They won't include any comments that you deleted before Google moved your data to your Google Drive.

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