• Mashable , Wednesday, December 26, 2007 11:45 AM

It may sound un-Google, but it's true: Google Reader users today are complaining about a recently introduced feature that automatically shares items with everyone in your Gmail account. In other words, so-called "shared" items are being sent to everyone in your contact list --but what if you don't want certain contacts to see certain items? Mashable points out that a more useful feature would be for Google Reader to generate a personal shared items mini blog that would allow users to customize what they send to people while keeping an archive of their actions.

Is "Google stomping on your privacy?" Mashable says 'no,' citing the company's official response to the complaints: "The share" feature was always intended to imply some amount of publicity. That's why we used the term "share" and had shared items marked as public by default on the Settings > Tags page." Indeed--unlike, say, Facebook's Beacon--you can opt to turn the "share" feature off altogether. "However, the fact that Google doesn't recognize how people are using their service, or chooses to disregard it, is more worrying," the report says.

Read the whole story at Mashable »