Google seems to truly believe that all information in the world should either be free, or should result in an income stream for them. First, they try to claim every copyrighted work on Earth, scan them, put them online, and make money off them, now they seem to think that all of your email contacts, etc, should be free and available to all, as well.

I’m talking, of course, about Google Buzz. You can create all the social networks you want to, but to automagically add me in and force me to opt out, to add all my email contacts, to (probably, eventually) add the same sort of information about what’s actually in my emails that you obviously already make available to advertisers (or use yourself in the “optimization” of the ads I see (on which I never click anyway)), none of that is going to fly.

I like Gmail. I like Google Reader. But I assure you, there are other ways to get the same things done, and I was inches away from deleting all my Google connections and going down those other routes, when I found the following link. This is a clear, step-by-step list of the three steps to take to kill Google’s latest spyware move, and I highly recommend that you follow it if you use Gmail. (NOTE: This link is to the official blog of the Supreme Court of the State of Texas — seems safe to me, but what do I know?)

Also note: the first step is to delete your Google public profile. This does not delete your Google account. Google Reader, etc, seem to remain unchanged. I was (am) angry enough over this latest grab by Google that I would have lived with it if it had, however, and I will take that step if it becomes necessary.