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  3. Google recently introduced a new service that adds social-networking features to its popular Gmail system. The service is called

Google recently introduced a new service that adds social-networking features to its popular Gmail system. The service is called

admin2022-07-19  134
问题     Google recently introduced a new service that adds social-networking features to its popular Gmail system. The service is called Buzz, and within hours of its release, people were howling about privacy issues—because, in its original form, Buzz showed everyone the list of people you e-mail most frequently. Even people who weren’t cheating on their spouses or secretly applying for new jobs found this a little unnerving.
    Google backtracked and changed the software, and apologized for the misstep, claiming that, gosh, it just never occurred to us that people might get upset. "The public reaction was something we did not anticipate. But we’ve reacted very quickly to people’s unhappiness," says Bradley Horowitz, vice president for product management at Google.
    Same goes for Facebook. In December, Facebook rolled out a new set of privacy settings. A spokesman says the move was intended to "empower people" by giving them more "granular" control over their personal information. But many viewed the changes as a sneaky attempt to push members to expose more information about themselves—partly because its default settings had lots of data, like your photo, city, gender, and information about your family and relationships, set up to be shared with everyone on the internet. (Sure, you could change those settings, but it was still creepy.) Facebook’s spokesman says the open settings reflect "shifting social norms around privacy." Ten years after Facebook was founded, he says, "we’ve noticed that people are not only sharing more information but also are becoming more comfortable about sharing more information with more people." Nevertheless, the changes prompted 10 consumer groups to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
    What’s happening is that our privacy has become a kind of currency. It’s what we use to pay for online services. Google charges nothing for Gmail; instead, it reads your Email and sends you advertisements based on keywords in your private messages.
    The genius of Google, Facebook, and others is that they’ve created services that are so useful or entertaining that people will give up some privacy in order to use them. Now the trick is to get people to give up more—in effect, to keep raising the price of the service.
    These companies will never stop trying to chip away at our information. Their entire business model is based on the notion of "monetizing" our privacy. To succeed they must slowly change the notion of privacy itself—the "social norm", as Facebook puts it—so that what we’re giving up doesn’t seem to valuable. Then they must gain our trust. Thus each new erosion of privacy comes delivered, paradoxically, with rhetoric about how Company X really cares about privacy. I’m not sure whether George Orwell would be appalled or impressed. And who knew Big Brother would be not a big government agency, but a bunch of kids in a Silicon Valley?
According to the passage, the original form of Buzz________.
选项 A、was released to test how people regarded their private rights
B、revolutionized the concept of the social networking function
C、ruined the reputation of Google’s well-known Gmail system
D、aroused people’s anger at the time it was added to Gmail system
答案D
解析 本题关键词是Buzz，询问关于Buzz服务的细节。可以定位到原文第一段第二句。根据原文第一段第二句，在Buzz刚被推出数小时内，人们就对隐私问题表示了强烈不满，因为Buzz的原始形式会向所有人展示你最常联系的发信人名单。从“强烈不满(howling about)”这个表达中，我们可以得出人们对Buzz服务加入谷歌邮箱表示愤怒。howling about privacy issues和aroused people’s anger属于相同含义，所以选项D是正确选项。选项A表述的测试人们对隐私权的看法原文未提及，属于无中生有。选项B的含义为：对社交网络功能的概念进行了变革，根据文章内容可知，Buzz服务只是谷歌为其邮件系统谷歌邮箱推出的一项有着社交网络特色的服务，还没到变革社交网络功能的程度，因此选项B属于扩大范围。选项C毁坏了谷歌邮箱的声誉是对全文的曲解，属于主观推导。第一段：人们对谷歌刚推出的Buzz服务涉及隐私问题感到不满。
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