Google adds Facebook-like features to Gmail

Google Buzz is Google's attempt to bring Facebook like sharing to Google.

The company introduced Buzz today, launching it in 1% of Gmail inboxes. It plans to will roll the service out to the majority of Gmail users within the week.

Buzz is a way to share photos, videos, web links, status updates and conversations with friends, just like on Facebook.

But your available crowd to share with is limited only to Gmail users. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, you don't have to sign up new friends or ask permission to "follow" folks -- your followers are pre-existing Gmail contacts. Google says it might open it up to others in the future.

Photo sharing is limited to links from Google's Picasa or Yahoo's Flickr. (The services allow you to put images into an e-mail without having to attach a photo.) Video links are limited to Google's YouTube, where videos can be played from within the e-mail.

Most impressive: web links, which instead of a blue underlined sentence instead get the graphical treatment, with the web pages headline and photos from the site included in the e-mail.

Shared material goes into the Buzz section of Gmail, and also appears on Google's Profile pages, where Google users are encouraged to fill out Facebook-like profile data about their preferences.

Google exec Bradley Horowitz says all the new graphics won't bloat your in-box. "We're fanatical about performance," he says. "It doesn't slow it down."

And despite adding all these social media tools that look quite similar to Facebook, Horowitz says Google doesn't have Facebook envy.

"We're doing fine by any traffic measure," he says. "This is about extending the reach of Gmail and making it one thousand times easier to share.

Buzz is also coming to Google Android and Apple's iPhone as well, and there are no issues about waiting for Apple to approve an app. (Apple has famously not approved apps from some competitors, such as Google's Voice.) Google did an end run around Apple by creating a program that opens not from the apps, but its Safari instead.

By Jefferson Graham

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