Gmail Account
Out of context: Reply #9
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- ghandolf0
Currently being tested by "a select group of e-mail aficionados," each Gmail account comes with 1,000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of storage. For comparison's sake, that's 500 times the storage space you get with a free Hotmail account and 250 times the Yahoo! storage allowance.
Gmail relieves you of the need to file your e-mail. Its advanced search technology lets you "quickly search every email [you've] ever sent or received" and automatically "organize[s] individual emails into meaningful 'conversations' that show messages in the context of all the replies sent in response to them."
Judging by all the enthusiasm emanating from Google headquarters, Gmail sounds like the greatest thing since sliced ham. You'd think that every e-mailer on the planet should be lining up to get a Gmail account. But you'd be wrong.
Remember what you learned in Econ 101 about the proverbial free lunch? In order to give you all that storage and convenience, Google's automated technology will scan incoming e-mails for keywords and place text ads inside the mail. Presumably the ads will be similar to the text ads that appear on the right-hand column of Google search results and in various locations on web sites and blogs, including mine.
Privacy advocates are almost unanimous in raising the alarm about Gmail. The adjective of choice seems to be "creepy." (I just googled "Gmail creepy" and got 928 hits.) Although Yahoo, Hotmail, and other free e-mail services place ads at the bottom of messages, their ads are not related to the message content. And it's not only the Gmail user who will enjoy eternal e-mail storage. Even if you delete a message or terminate your account, your messages will remain on Google's sever indefinitely.
Chris Hoofnagle of EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center), in a Wired News interview, likened Gmail's search-and-seed ad placement to putting "an operator on the phone to listen to your conversation and pitch things to you while you're talking." Privacy and security consultant Richard M. Smith, quoted in the same article, raised the spectre of advertisers with a political agenda purchasing keywords "to place inappropriate or intrusive ads in a user's e-mail." Using the example of "pro-life" advocates targeting pro-choice e-mails, Smith said, "It's one of the creepiest things I've heard of."
Marketers also have reservations about Gmail's potential impact. They fear that an e-mailed ad for a product could trigger the placement of competitors' ads in the e-mail. In order to divert such ads from e-mail campaigns they have already purchased, marketers would "also have to pay a premium to ensure that they owned the top contextual ad placement," according to Jupiter Research analyst David Daniels. On top of that, a London investment research firm now asserts ownership of the Gmail trademark and, according to Reuters, intends to "battle to keep it."
The group Privacy International has already filed a complaint with the British Information Commissioner, citing Gmail's practices as a violation of European Union privacy laws. Today, a coalition of 28 privacy and consumer activists and organizations issued an open letter to Google's co-presidents, urging them to suspend Gmail service "until the privacy issues are adequately addressed" and to "clarify its written information policies regarding data retention and data sharing among its business units."
Concerns cited in the letter include
- violation of "the implicit trust of an email service provider"
- problematic "data retention and correlation policies," and
- "potentially dangerous precedents" for "reduced expectations of privacy in email communications," with implications for law, policy, commerce, and the very notion of privacy itself.Google officials are reviewing the letter, but seem confident that consumers will warm to Gmail once they understand its features privacy protections. As Katie Hafner points out in tomorrow's New York Times, "there is evidence that when it comes to privacy, consumers are willing to make trade-offs." Whether Google has overestimated that willingness remains to be seen.
When Google issued its Gmail press release last week, a number of technology watchers at first suspected it was an April Fool's prank. The more we learn about Gmail, the more those of us concerned about privacy may wish it had been a prank indeed.