Congratulations all 150 million Gmail users – you’ve just joined a social network. This is purely anecdotal, but most people I have come across this week are not all that thrilled with Buzz. The feeling is pretty much, “Great, another social network to follow.”

I too am a bit skeptical, though I understand what Google is trying to do. Its bread and butter is indexing the Internet and getting everyone online through using Google services. The social networking explosion has, for better or worse, left a bunch of the web out of Google’s clutches.

Personally Google’s index-the-universe aspirations make me a bit queasy, but I am a heavy user of their services and generally happy with the experience. And Google does tend to listen to user feedback pretty closely – Buzz was already tweaked recently to account for some privacy concerns. But by making Buzz a permanent part of Gmail, Google is showing it has pretty heavy aspirations for this service and hooking in new users.

I’ll follow the Buzz for now, but I am hopeful there is a way to turn it off in the future if the buzzing gets too loud.