I'm not disagreeing with the fact that Google violated the principle of least astonishment here in a way that people are right to be upset about due to privacy concerns... that's what I was agreeing with on my "first hand".
I just don't have any strong emotional reaction to the situation because of my binary view of sharing on the Internet. Any site feature that allows you to share something "to selected people only" is more an illusion of security/privacy than a real thing (you can't control who THEY share it with, etc). Even if you never share the photo with others and have it marked strictly 'private', I still see putting it up online as basically "sharing it with the world" because all of the untrustworthy middlemen you introduce that have access to that data regardless of your public/private settings.
Because I don't view such public/private/partially-shared/etc features as effective security for photos/videos/writings/etc in the first place, when the way they operate changes in some unexpected way I can't work up much rage about it, though (again) I do see why other people may be upset about it.
I don't share that "binary view of sharing on the internet".
I store photos "on the internet". I also store emails in Gmail. I face-tag photos with whoever is in them, for the same reasons I tag emails with whoever they relate to.
This is as if Gmail were to automatically share my Gmail conversations whenever I mention someone in an email.
I've got a better one: You write a cheque to somebody, and suddenly your bank lets them see your transaction history.
There's a level of control and security one may sacrifice by doing things online, that doesn't mean the information is automatically public, and it definitely doesn't make it OK for Google to treat it in an entirely unexpected way that actually violates ordinary privacy/access control rules.
I agree that the public/private/partially-shared features aren't terribly effective and as such am careful about what I post. I do however find them useful. I don't allows re-sharing of my photos and I've told everyone I share photos with that I don't want them re-shared, specifically on facebook. Anyone that goes to the effort to download and share my photos clearly doesn't respect my intent or concerns and is removed from the list of people I share with.
I just don't have any strong emotional reaction to the situation because of my binary view of sharing on the Internet. Any site feature that allows you to share something "to selected people only" is more an illusion of security/privacy than a real thing (you can't control who THEY share it with, etc). Even if you never share the photo with others and have it marked strictly 'private', I still see putting it up online as basically "sharing it with the world" because all of the untrustworthy middlemen you introduce that have access to that data regardless of your public/private settings.
Because I don't view such public/private/partially-shared/etc features as effective security for photos/videos/writings/etc in the first place, when the way they operate changes in some unexpected way I can't work up much rage about it, though (again) I do see why other people may be upset about it.