Here is what my friend Karin had to say about gMail. Don’t know if this
makes a difference to anyone, but I put it out there for your reading from
someone who actually helped develop the technology Google is using.

- Mary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It would be extremely hypocritical of me to judge Google for using
this technology, since I helped to develop it :) — this ability to
analyze the semantic content of a document/text/email comes from the
technology they acquired when they bought Applied Semantics (where I
worked — on the text analysis technology — prior to coming to the
Lab).

The thing that you have to understand is that the keyword in the above
sentence is “electronically”. It’s software that’s “reading” the
emails, not people. And the net result is that you get ads which are
far more relevant to you — there is nothing more annoying than ads
for singles websites when you’re reading messages for a parenting list
(IMO).

And Yahoo may not be doing it for their emails, but they are certainly
doing it, to a lesser degree, for their groups. It’s not a
coincidence that you see Pampers ads when you read PumpMoms on-line.
Of course, in that case, they are not using very sophisticated
technology — they aren’t actually scanning the messages, they are
just using the categories that the groups are placed into, but the
business motivation is the same — they will make more money on
click-through banner ads if the ads are more relevant to the people
reading the messages.

I personally don’t think this technology is an invasion of privacy –
the emails are being scanned for content, yes, but the results of that
scan are used to present *you* with relevant ads. The results of the
scan are not stored anywhere, and even if you click on one of the
advertising links, the advertisers aren’t given any data on *why*
their ad was brought up as potentially relevant to you. The
advertisers don’t even know *who* clicked over to their site — when
you click on the link, Google tracks that there was a click-through
(but not who clicked through) and then just opens the target page in a
new window. So information about what kinds of messages you read
isn’t being distributed anywhere, or used for any purpose other than
to make your personal experience better. Yes, the result is that
Google hopes to make more money on the ads because they are more
relevant to you, but the data about what you’re reading doesn’t go
anywhere.

There’s another product which Applied Semantics was developing, and
which I hope Google will implement one day, which is based on the same
basic technology but perhaps makes it more clear why you would want
this sort of thing. Imagine having websearch and web browsing much
more integrated — so that you’re reading a webpage, and would like to
find more information about the topic you’re reading about. Rather
than having to open a new search window and come up with keywords of
your own to search on, you could just click on a “More like this”
button or something similar and the technology would scan the page,
figure out what the content of the page is, and then search for other
pages which have similar content (and they would of course use this to
bring up relevant ads as well). Google already does this on their
search pages, but the technology there isn’t as sophisticated as the
Applied Semantics content analysis is. I think that that would be a
very cool tool to have on my desktop, to make web browsing more
efficient. But the issues are the same — you have to allow the
software to scan the page and figure out what the content is. It’s
somewhat more anonymous because you’re not logging into an email
account, and the most they can track is an IP address, but the IP
address already gives them a lot of information.

BTW, when I registered for Gmail IIRC I was not asked for any personal
information other than the name that I wanted to use on the account
(e.g. for the “From” line) — unlike Yahoo who tracks addresses,
telephone numbers, …. I could have used Mickey Mouse for all they
care. It would require some work on their part to track me down.

Personally, I love Gmail. The interface took me a day or two to get
used to, because the organization of the email is quite different from
other email programs, but now I find it incredibly convenient and
useful. Plus you have the power of the full Google search engine
built into your email and so it is super easy to find specific
messages you’re looking for.

I don’t think that Google is going to have many problems — Gmail will
take off even if there are people out there who don’t sign up for it
simply because of privacy concerns.

I agree with you too, Google is my friend, has helped me tremendously, and up to now, they have given us no reason to distrust them. I hope it stays that way.

- 1 GB, plenty space for those use free services and always out of quota (might not be a biggie for you and me, but for millions of others it is)
- Excellent threading
- Super fast
- Excellent searching capabilitites. Fast too!
- Very good spam protection
- Innovative grouping. Very logical. I love it
- It is made by Google, I love Google, Google is my friend, it helps me every day on my personal and professional sides
- Did I say it is superfast?

See also, Gmail hype and Gmail is not for everyone and others…