It turned out to be a pleasant surprise that Google’s e-mail service wasn’t an April Fool’s Day joke after all, but it’s already raising its share of controversy.
The main controversy seems to be over the plan to show ads based on the content of the e-mail you’re currently reading. The normal gut reaction to this is that it’s an intrusion into our privacy, since after all the e-mails are meant to be read only by the recipient, not Google.
Really though, this is a red herring. As long as the e-mail is being stored by Google, there’s no guarantee of any kind of privacy to begin with. Google claims that the scan results are kept private and people are saying that that’s not enough and they don’t trust Google to stick to that, but by the same argument there’s no reason to trust them even if they weren’t scanning them for ad targetting. For all we know, the Google admins could print out randomly picked e-mails and laugh at them over coffee.
It also depends on how well it works in practice. It would be kind of tacky if an e-mail about Uncle Bob dying of cancer gets accompanied by ads for funeral services…
The other major issue is that any old e-mail will be retained by Google indefinitely. This is more a matter of control than privacy, and it’s much more debatable. If I want to delete an e-mail, does Google have the right to retain it in its archives, even though it may not show up in my inbox anymore? The e-mail is arguably my intellectual property, but it’s also Google’s equipment. Presumably the agreement we’ll have to accept to use Gmail will give them this right, but is it a right they can even legitimately demand?
I dunno, I’m not an IP lawyer… :-P
In any event, it’s good that all of this is getting aired out now, so that people are aware of what they’re getting into. Lawsuits to block it and/or force it to change seem a little extreme, though. There’s always the simple answer, too: if you don’t like it, don’t use it…
I’ll skip my usual broken-record style re-hashing of old exposed nerves and skip to what would have been my closing statement… :-)
When it all comes down to it, you pretty much sum up the one point I tend to (usually) purposely overlook. Nobody’s forcing people to sign up.
The only thing I’m left to wonder about is why organizations (is Google even considered a “company”?) offer services that are sub-par, and violate certain personal boundaries at all. I mean, sure… The whole don’t-like-it-don’t-use-it point is perfectly valid, but why even bother offering a service if it goes against what people require and expect?
Well, if there were no reason to use Gmail in the first place then the whole thing would be moot. :-)
It’s pretty much the same reason people would use something like Hotmail: a central place to collect your e-mail, a more-or-less permanent address that you can retain even after switching ISPs, an archive that you won’t lose if your own computer blows up, a place you can check remotely fairly easily, etc…
And Google certainly is a company. Despite all the “geek cred” they have, they’re still out to make money and they want to do so by doing targetted ads. If they can’t do those ads then they’re not going to make money off the service and would have no reason to even offer it. They’re not going to offer us a gig of free e-mail space just because they’re nice guys… :-)