On March 5th 2008—two years ago—Fire Eagle went into public beta. Underpinning the design was this: Given the multitude of different public and private contexts in which a user can benefit from using their location, the user should have simple granular control over the disclosure of their location.

Two years. Today, Molly Wood writes about her initial experiences with the brand new Google Buzz (emphasis mine):

When you first visit the [Google Buzz] mobile app on your Android phone and attempt to post something, you’ll be asked whether you want to Share Location or Decline. The “Remember this Preference” box is prechecked too, so be sure you’re ready to have everyone know right where you are, whenever you post to Buzz.

[…]

Buzz also displays buzzes from people near your location—and identifies them, as well—by exact address. And there are no preferences in the Android app—no way, near as I can tell—to choose to broadcast only to the list of people you follow or a group you’ve established, as you can in the Web interface. So be equally prepared for everyone around you to know who you are and where you are when you post to Buzz from your phone. Yeah, no, really. I’m totally not making this up.

—Google Buzz: Privacy Nightmare by Molly Wood (CNet)

On a related note, Twitter’s geotagging feature doesn’t support disclosure granularity yet, either. If making your precise location public via each Tweet you post sounds unsettling, can can still hook up Fire Eagle to Twitter (using the old-school “Update your profile location field” method) using Eagle Tweet, and have control over the level of detail shared.

(Disclosure: I was a member of the Fire Eagle engineering team for eight months in 2008 and 2009.)