Jacqui Cheng of ars technica, my emphasis:
These swift and widespread changes to Buzz's automatic-everything behaviors are certainly commendable, and it's clear that Google does listen to user feedback in ways that other companies don't. However, the sheer extent to which the company had to back off from its initial launch functionality goes to show how delusional Google was when it came to its assumptions about user privacy.
Just because I share something somewhere else on the Internet doesn't mean I want it auto-linked to something else I use, and just because I choose to use Gmail doesn't mean I even necessarily want to be involved in Buzz at all. Those should be choices that are left up to the user, not Google on behalf of the user. End result: Google is left cleaning up its messes when it could be moving forward.