Google’s launch of its real time updating, social network styled service, Google Buzz, has been plagued with privacy concerns, and Google is now to ask users to confirm their own privacy settings.

Google Buzz seems destined to remain an out of sight, out of mind service for most...

With the announcement of Google Buzz, many Gmail users suddenly found themselves in the very awkward position of having what appeared to be a personal profile made available to every person they had ever contacted through their Gmail accounts, which could have proved very compromising indeed. Moreover, the option to disable Google Buzz provided at launch was essentially a “hide Google buzz” option. Those headaches still haven’t gone away though.

The BBC is carrying word that changes to Google Buzz will ensure that the user is able to quickly access every aspect of their Google Buzz profile, including whether or not their Buzz account is connected to other services they’re signed up to, Twitter being among the prime candidates.

If nothing else, it’s nice to see Buzz being made that bit more private, but the fact is that it’s not really in the position that Google might have hoped, and privacy isn’t the only concern. With Google Buzz connecting to multiple accounts, following users with accounts on multiple, differing services quickly becomes a fairly cluttered affair, and, when faced with the choice of unfollowing real-life friends to keep their Buzz feed readable, it seems that many are happier to just check out individual services as necessary.

Of course, there’s always the risk when launching any new social networking option that you’ll be hitting a market that has effectively reached a level of service saturation… and it seems that, privacy fears aside, Google Buzz could well have fallen victim to the ubiquity of the services it pulls data from.