Frankly, I’m totally over the Buzz (not that I was ever under it).

When Google Buzz was introduced to the world on Feb 9 – or rather thrust upon the millions of Gmail users – I was away on holidays and my Twitter stream went crazy. Then, I didn’t have the time to try it out and check on it.

I immediately signed on the moment I got back to a desktop computer. The lag was so bad, I thought my computer hung. But I wasn’t about to give up. Over the course of the next few days, I tried to go in daily to figure it out.

Well, I shouldn’t have bothered.

For those not in the know, Google Buzz was introduced a couple of weeks ago by, well, Google. When it was launched, word on cyberspace was that Google was finally going social. Yes, with the popularity of Facebook and Twitter, questions have been raised in the past as to whether social media will eventually overtake the search engines as the choice tools for searches.

It was really a matter of time before the Internet bigwigs ”went social”.

One way that this has been done in the past few months is via deals cut with social networking sites to have its contents available via Google’s search facility. Public content from Facebook was made available to Google, and the latter’s search results now include live updates from blogs and Tweets, among other things.

Google Buzz, in an essence, was a way to take this one step further – by creating its own content via your own updates. With social media becoming such a strong entity on the Internet, fears that emails will soon be irrelevant is not unjustified. Google had to move forward.

However, not all the buzz on Buzz (pun intended) was good. Many people hailed the genius of Google – they had a massive database to start with and incorporating the system into Gmail appeared like that most logical thing to do.

Of course, with this came criticism on its encroachment on people’s privacy. Buzz initially connected you with people you communicate with most via Gmail – some people, especially those whose jobs required discretion, preferred to have this information private. There has already been a lawsuit filed for invasion of privacy.

My initial reaction to Buzz is that it is too busy, and cluttered. Truth be told, I still haven’t totally figured it out well – because I don’t know how to!

My biggest beef with Buzz really is the spam. I find my Sent Mail box to be filled with messages that I have ”sent” out via Buzz, when in fact, I have sent nothing.

But because my Twitter, Flickr and blog is linked to Buzz (well, I had to do it to test it out, right?), each time I sent a tweet out from Twitter or upload a photo, it appears on my Buzz timeline, and therefore becomes a ”Sent Mail”.

And, each time someone on Buzz responses to these notifications – I get a mail in my inbox, which is rather annoying (and spam-like).

On the subject of responses, I am also sceptical of Buzz’s role as an aggregator. Granted, because the database of ”viewers” is pre-built thanks to my email contacts, and the fact that Buzz passively turned all email users into social media networkers (without having to sign up), I now have a ”larger” following or readership. But at what price?

For me, the fact that I am now getting reactions to my tweets from a different outlet is ruining my Twitter experiences. Communication about one topic sparked from one tweet is now happening on two different platforms which doesn’t cross-over.

This is the same reason why I removed the ability to update my Facebook status via Twitter (and vice versa).

Until Buzz becomes more user-friendly, and serves a more distinct purpose, it is unlikely to grow fast enough to overtake other social media tools, although Google executives have been quoted in reports as saying that this was never their intention.

Still, as easy as it is for Google to incorporate it into our lives, it is equally easy for us to get out of it. When I tweeted a complaint about the spam mails I was receiving due to Buzz the other day, many people were quick to direct me to the link where I could simply turn the feature off.

This leads me to think that many of them have done the same thing.

I haven’t done it just yet. However, if Google doesn’t come out with a better platform, or feature that makes it a unique social media tool soon, I’m likely to follow in the footsteps of my friends and click the button that will tell it to, well, Buzz off.