"I think it's ridiculous that I have zero control over who gets to follow me – there's no way I can accept or reject stalkers, and knowing they're "following" me is cold comfort."
Click on the stalker's name. A little profile shows up. Click on "block" and it should do the trick.

Google didn't really watch out for privacy breached before rolling out Buzz to the public, and I think that was a huge mistake, because there are millions of people out there that are waiting to bazooka your face on privacy issues.
I think the privacy problems will be dealt with sooner or later (I agree that's a little lame).
So I agree they f*ck*d up on the privacy.
However on the practical side, integration into gmail changes everything for me. I used to never chat before it was integrated into gmail, simply because I hated to have another window (/tab) running.
On the other hand, I don't see Buzz as a competitor to facebook, because it's not exactly a social network: you don't have the same profile-linked -to-photos system and a special page with boxes you show off with. After having toyed around a little with Buzz, I agree with Mariano that it's more useful in sharing (as he says, "It's made for rich content, and pushes you to share more relevant stuff.")

Lastly, it seems like most people around haven't really used Buzz extensively. I'm not saying about you guys (Flo, Andrea, Mariano), but many others. I think by using it extensively, it might become useful and powerful.

Just this though: "(And by the way, you can interact with Facebook notifications, just reply to the email, you don't even need to open facebook)."
One-click like, comment, and reply?

Answer, yea. It technically takes less clicks to answer to a comment or wall post on Facebook via Gmail than on Buzz.

"I used to think Blogger was their only flaw too bad they added one."
Blogger was never a Google product, they just bought it so they could search through it more easily, like jaiku (and maybe youTube). Blogger was created by Evan Williams (the same as Twitter). Frankly, it's much better than it looks at first sight.
-> Trust me, they could search blogs just fine.

And : "If Buzz was a Microsoft product, you'd be laughing at it."
I praised Vista on first look. 'nuff said.
-> Yeah. That was *before* Vista. Google Buzz is *after* vista.