Slashdot Mirror
Speculating About Gmail
rjelks writes "The Register is running an article about Google's new email service that was mentioned earlier,
here. The story details the new privacy concerns about Gmail's privacy policy and Google's tracking habits. The policy states that Google will not guarantee the deletion of emails that are archived even if you cancel your account. 'The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Indeed, residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account.'" Reader cpfeifer writes "Rich Skrenta (founder of ODP, and Topix) speculates in his blog that the real product Google is creating isn't web search or email, but a massively scalable, distributed computing platform. 'It's a distributed computing platform that can manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 node server clusters. It includes a petabyte, distributed, fault tolerant filesystem, distributed RPC code, probably network shared memory and process migration. And a datacenter management system which lets a handful of ops engineers effectively run 100,000 servers.' If he's right, the question isn't what product will Google announce next, but what product will they not be able to announce?"
I was still under the impression that this could be an april fools.
I am assuming from the way this reads that it has actually been confirmed?
My god! They are building Skynet! When will it achieve sentience?
Here's my question: how are they going to make sure people only have one account each? What's to prevent people from getting dosens and backing up their harddrive?
If so, I think I'll put in a resume for a job on, what was it - the Copernicus base?
Gmail was an April Fools Day joke, yes?
its a different sort of tool, with the advantager of tracking etc and the disadvantage of not being private. just keep that in mind and there arent many problems. i love the idea, and ill use it if i can. i wont say anything extreme or criminal, and really, it is their property, so they can offer it for my use with whatever terms they like. IP rights and plagarism ideas are rapidly changing in our shrinking world, so keep that in mind
so I think they get the benefit of the doubt until further notice.
Does anybody have anything to the contrary?
I presume I probably wasn't the only person who put their email address into the 'interested in an account?' section on the gmail website before remembering that it could be linked to all my previous searches on this machine... http://www.google-watch.org/email.html suggests deleting the google.com cookie before and afterwards, but might be too late for that...
-jermy
I think Gmail is going to be great. It completely blows any other free email service out of the water. So what if privacy is in question? Nobody is forcing anyone to use it. You can use it, enjoy it, and if you really care you can just not send anything you don't want others seeing and use a different address for recieving sensitive emails. Or you can just NOT use it, and go on your way. This isn't a big deal.
Google is just providing a service. Use it if you want, or don't.
I am a filthy pirate.
What amazes me are the services that offer I'm acting as a mini-isp to friends, and with a $50/month dedicated server we're renting, $10/month gets us 10GB of email+web storage.
Hard drive capacity has gone up a lot since the time of HotMail - I'm amazed no free email service started offering reasonable disk space earlier.
"the contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Indeed, residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account."
Go ahead and horde my spam. I don't want it anyway.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
I think this is what made it the best april fools joke - the fact that it wasn't.
So all those that came up with all the reasons why it must have been a joke, are the ones that were fooled.
Advanced users are users too!
Hrm. So if this picture is to be believed, the yellow race not only has yellow skin, but they also have yellow teeth?
They're going to have mirrors, snapshots, backups, offsite backups, remote replication... Expecting them to purge your email when you delete your account is crazy.
'The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Indeed, residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account.'
If I can get a free account, myname@google.com, with 1 GB of storage, and with IMAP or POP3, I don't give a damn if they use my mail for marketing research, or if they keep it long after I'm dead. The reason is I don't work for M16, the KGB or the CIA, I only break little laws and I don't dig child porno. So basically who cares if a few of my mails get left on a server somewhere.
Privay is a real concern, but worrying about this is like worrying about the fact that postmen can read your postcard when you send it. The truth is they can, but they don't give a shit.
No-one's going to force you to use the system. If you don't trust it, don't use it.
That man tried to kill mah Daddy
torrents.google.com ... it doesn't have to be illegal contents.
There's a discussion about this discussion over in the Gmail community at Orkut.com.
Anonymous? Check. Coward? Check. Ass? Check.
** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
Just try and see if you can find any useful data in there ;)
Seriously, it is nice to see that the Google system is not so overly polished that they wipe out any traces of human emotions and cute little oddites.
Happy birthday, April!
I wonder if the Gmail service would be available to general public before their IPO? That might increase the value of their stock significantly. Also, once public, they have to answer to investors to maximize the return...and change of management/merger could very well mean significant privacy issues.
If/when Gmail is available, I would use it to store big file attachments (mainly storage) and still use my regular ISP for normal day-to-day communications UNLESS GOOGLE GUARANTEES COMPLETE PRIVACY NOW AND IN FUTURE and no caching of deleted emails and no tracking (seems highly unlikely)...
Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
I agree that it will break privacy but u will get mail with many features, but I wonder if google is testing most of us by changing privacy policy and then looking back here (/.) what ppl think abt it. And finally they might start with something else?
I thought Gmail was just Google Groups. Threaded group mail anyone? The press release was just an April Fool's announcement for a product that they already have. Or not. Maybe they are leveraging the technology of Usenet/Deja/Google Groups with a privacy layer on top to create a 'closed' Usenet.
A distributed system is something truly worthy of the doctorate pedigree of Google's staff. They have an incredible concentration of brain power and I have always found it hard to believe they need all that to add a few more boxes to run a simple page weight algorithm and a web crawler.
Finally, it all makes sense. They're trying to put all (but a few of) the sysadmins out of work! A noble enterprise, indeed. We hate them, they hate themselves.
But seriously, this has been a dream of admins for a long time. 'Bout time somebody sat down and did it. Why can't a single box manage 100,000 others? If one man can do 100 with the right tools he could do them all. The difficulty of transparency is incredible, but even small teams in universities utilizing a few phd's and transient graduate students are making headway in the area. No reason a well funded lab of hundreds of phds working full time can't achieve it.
Wow... I guess the BIG question is what they'll do with it. I mean... are they just doing it for their existing products? Are they going to license it out for astronomical sums to places like Lockheed and Sandia? Will they (gasp) open source it? Or, most frightening, they will run the world's largest, most efficient super computer and charge pennies for utility based computing and put Sun and IBM out of business in the process of creating a mainframe monopoly out of whiteboxes. Heck... they could probably buy out Sun to get that sweet Solaris technology for themselves. IBM has all kinds of retarded patents for toilet seats and ways to dance on an office chair. I guess they're worth getting for a laugh.
Here's my question: how are they going to make sure people only have one account each? What's to prevent people from getting dosens and backing up their harddrive?
They don't limit the number of accounts, they just limit attatchment size and keep an eye out for abuses, like hundreds of downloads of from 1 account, or a scripted mailing of hundreds of 10 meg attatchments to any one account.
I guess that will become the largest digital garbage can on earth. Just think of all the spam mails that will be stored forever just because no one cares to delete them anymore :-))).
obviously if this is the goal they want to achieve, why would they hide it to the world?
2 49&mode=thread) that xserves G5 were going to power such a thing, 100 000 xserve G5 (Virginia tech made it clear they didn't get any deal so why Google would) can reach between 299 million and 579 million US dollar. Add to that the cooling, the room, the interconnect and all those little niceties that comes with it and it turns out that the project will cost a lot of money, not impossible but still. It will also probably need to come with its own electrical system, a mini-central if you wish, else it will cost them quite a lot per month as far as the electirc bill goes.
What would be the point? This is not a new concept or something no one ever though of, the only true obstacle to such a thing is money, they'll need a lot of it.
I read here (http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/31/2341
Yes, it's real. The 1000 MB storage limit is listed at the GMail homepage here.
If you are ainterested in an account, you can give them you current e-mail here
and they will send information once GMail goes gold.
Also note that Firefox and Mozilla support is explicitly mentioned!
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
There are technical solutions like PGP for those who are concerned about their emails being read.
For those people who are concerned about google monitoring thier searching habits, why not use a proxy server?
For those people concerned about privacy issues: If you don't understand the medium enough to protect yourself, don't trust it. The best solution for protecting yourself online is understanding the battlefield. Knowledge is power, therefore you should arm yourself. It is as simple as that.
This is the Internet. You can say "fuck" here. - AC
I don't see why the privacy zealots are all up in arms about this. Don't they have something better to do like bitch about the Patriot Act? Seriously!
Google has been very up-front about what they will or will not be willing to do with the cookie "trifecta" (Google-Orkut-Gmail, as mentioned in the Register article) that they are gunning for. Not only is it spelled out quite clearly in the Gmail Privacy Statment, the co-founder is going on recrod saying "Hey, that's not such a bad idea."
What's my point? If you're neurotic about your privacy and you're apprehensive about giving someone the ability to cross-reference your search info with your personal info and your mail info, turn off cookies and don't use Gmail.
Let's all repeat this slowly, just to let it sink in: If you don't want to use Gmail, you don't have to use Gmail.
If Google goes ahead with Gmail and includes 1E9 bytes of storage per user account, as it plans to, there's obviously going to have to be some sort of cost involved to offset their decision to provide an extremely valuable service. Much like Hotmails users are required to pawn their eternal soul to the Prince of Darkness, Gmail users are going to have to bite the bullet and accept that their privacy may not be so private anymore. Why is this such a big problem?
[END rant]
--
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
Does anyone see the potential for Gmail to be used as a huge shared spam database. Include a simple "classify email as spam" on the webmail interface, add the spam to a shared Bayesian filter dictionary. Allow mail clients to compare incoming mail with Gmail's database. At the least, this could eliminate the need for new mail users to having to train their filters for a couple of weeks before it starts becoming effective.
If gmail wants to store a bunch of my obsolete PGP'd mails please let them do so. Email's never been really private. If you really care about email privacy you should encrypt your mail. And you can still do that using gmail, I suppose?
Most of the 1G storage quota will be taken by large attachments of movies and other stuff that gets forwarded around. Google are figuring out that if they merge identical copies the actual average storage consumption per user is going to be far less than 100mb.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I tend to skip all articles about Google on The Register, because they are all written by Andrew Orlowski -- who seems to have a personal vendetta against Google. I suspect it doesn't rate his personal website high enough :-).
Reuters was confirming it, says LinuxWorld, as early as April 1 itself
Check the bottom link on the Gmail front page (linked to by your piece even). "Happy Birthday April"?
A project like this would take garbage and sift through it to find, make, stamp and press gold.
The skynet jokes while funny, don't do anything to curtain the tin foil wonderment at possibly the greatest data mining/data tool created to date.
This story is bigger than it appears. ((um...and greetings to the new data overlords :P)))
Let's keep in mind that patents are in place to keep lawyers employed and keep them litigating. -CatGrep
What if someone comes out with a way to encrypt all communications to use with Gmail...\ ...
I wonder what effect will it have on their ad-delivery as well as tracking when they would have to break the email content encryption
What types of personal information do we collect and how do we use it?
Account information. When you register with Google, we will request some personal information, including your first and last name, a user name (which will be used for your email address) and password to create your account. Your password will be maintained on our system in an encrypted form. Just in case you forget your password, we also may ask you to choose a secret question and answer and provide a secondary email address where we can contact you to re-access your Google account. If you already have a Google account, we may ask you for some additional information to enable an email account.
Email contents and usage. The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Google's computers process the information in your email for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering targeted related information (such as advertisements and related links), preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your email, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail. Residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account. Google employees do not access the content of any mailboxes unless you specifically request them to do so (for example, if you are having technical difficulties accessing your account) or if required by law, to maintain our system, or to protect Google or the public.
We also may collect information about the use of your account, such as how much storage you are using, how often you log in and other information related to your registration and use of Gmail. Information displayed or clicked on in your Gmail account (including UI elements, ads, links, and other information) is also recorded. We use this information internally to deliver the best possible service to you, such as improving the Gmail user interface, preventing fraud within our advertising system, and better targeting related information.
Google will never sell, rent or share your personal information, including your Gmail address or email content, with any third parties for marketing purposes without your express permission.
-ashot
Anyone notice that SpyMac is already offering a free 1GB E-mail account? No keyword based ads (not that I have a problem with Google's use of them). It even gives pop3 access, which last I read, gmail won't (at first).
I'm starting to think this isn't the best place to promote my Anti-Sig Campaign.
distributed, massively scalable, fault tolerant, process migration, web-scale
think about it. google is the largest, best search engine in the world that everyone knows and loves to use. right? well, look at thier product now: you can search for images, text, news, usegroups, hell, you can even go shopping on it. i mean, i typed in "dkjgs" to spawn a browser window on it in safari and it displayed 6 responses! the thing is, google right now has to search all the content on the web from computers it runs and has to go out and find the files you're looking for on other computers. (correct me if i'm wrong here, i know that slashdot is the place for that) but... imagine if all of that content that their machines had to find was already stored internally on the network harddrives. it would be so much easier. by offering everyone a full gigabyte of space, people will out everything in there that they need. you could be at work and have a harddrive from home there. if you have a fast connection, you could stream porn in the office! ho ho ho, what a concept! (luckily i don't work in an office, i enjoy said materials in the privacy.. said too much) the potential for this is incredible, but! to let something like this fall into the hands of big evil corporations would be really, really awful. anyways, just my two cents, let me know what you think.
I'm curious...has anyone here used a web-based or non-web based email service/program that threaded your emails? (keeping all of a particular sets of emailes/replies in a thread)
It seems pretty damn obvious and simple, but I havent seen it anywhere.
Between the searching, the basically unlimited storage, and this great sounding threading, this totally blows any other email service I've seen right out of the water.
I seriously thought this was an april fools joke. 'I gig per person, you poor suckers! remember its april fools!' Its true, if they can do this, what cant they do?
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
The GMAIL service will provide one of the largest userbases on the net. With a drop of a couple million dollars to start it up this idea is way more powerful than spending a million dollars to advertise for 30 seconds during the superbowl.
I agree with another slashdot user that it should be called Moogle and they're slogan should be "Great Googley-Moogley!!!"
If you really want privacy just PGP your message... that way google ads will be forced to server junk ads.. -:))
http://fury.com/article/1990.php
-------
FM Clan
Anyone who uses Gmail (or Hotmail, or Yahoo, or *any* webmail) for confidential material is fooling themselves about its confidentiality, but as a mail service for shuffling data around it will be very useful, but Gmail is going to have cover itself and protect itself from being the biggest mp3, warez and pr0n distributor in the world.
In related news, excentric millionaire and communication guru Bob Page aquired Google today. "With Bob Page vision's, Google will reach new heights in consummer services" said a Google representative. In answer to the question of where would the facility be found, Bob Page said it would be "near Groom Lake in Nevada".
Wow! Google always get a free pass on Slashdot, it seems.
"Privacy isn't a concern because, after all, *you* choose to give it up by using the service"? I think it's wrong. I think the facts that Gmail reads your incoming mail to choose which text ads it will show you is a very bad precedent. Isn't it the first time someone offers a communication service and they tell you that they will know the content of every message you get?
The fascination with the power of technology blinds the Google team it seems (like it blinds people on Slashdot), I wonder what Norvig thinks of this issue...
Actually, my prediction is:
"gmail will be spam-free"
Think about it: If a Bayesian filter can become extremely successful when "learning" from a single individual's inbox, it should be considerably more effective when "learning" from hundreds of thousands or even millions of readily-analyzed inboxes. Since it's webmail, Google will know immediately once a single recipient of a suspected spam message has marked/confirmed that message as spam, and can then use this action as input to their real-time spam filtering engines.
Thoughts?
Isn't it just simpler, faster, and safer to burn a couple of CDs with the information?
is this logo
:)
The lunatic is in my head
I bet that you'll see adwords based on the content of the emails and the storage part is related to the click through rate on those subjects cross referenced with said content and against your personal profile.
Does orkut server adwords? As a non-member I don't know
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I'm gonna do it, hell maybe since I'm getting in when it starts I'll even get an email address that doesn't have to be Skretumis936278
ok, so assuming that one gets a 1Gb email acount, even if the files size limits are rather small (~10mb), given that they are going to allow for more open access policies by supporting, explicitly, more user friendly browsers (Mozilla, etc...)
.rar chops) of an iso/app etc, you can have these attachements stored in various directories, with specific subject names detailing the attachment.
How difficult will it be to create a torrent storage app that uses emailing of mass files, for example;
Say you have an account with pop access; you have a bot that watches the email account for emails sent with specific commands - if you upload a bunch of files (say
Leech1 sends you an email requesting App-set-1. The file monitor then parses Leech request - and auto forwards the emails with the appropriate attachment to the Leech account.
All at internal google speeds.
The Leech can then DL the attachements at leasure - or, just ahve his mail app open and receiving as they arrive.
Is the system to instantly correlate the billion biometric files that might be created if everyone falls for biometric passports.
If every European, Japanese, American, basically everyone with a passport is made to deliver up their fingerprints, photographs and maybe iris scans, there will need to be a system to cross check all of this "At the speed of Google", every time a passport holder crosses a border anywhere in the world. Google will provide this service to governments, over an SSL secured web interface.
Google has the experience, they have the hardware in place, and they are going to make a fortune out of this. If they do it, it will be the greatest switch from good to pure evil in the history of software.
I use the word "might" above because this Biometric Net may not be created if everyone simply refuses to be fingerprinted and photographed. Of all the countries in line for this, the Americans will probably shout the loudest. Fingerprinting is for criminals; to be forced to get fingerprinted and biometrically photographed to get a passport, the data of which will be stored by other governments and anyone with an RFID reader is simply too much to swallow for any freedom loving person.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
There's papers already written about Google's existing file system. It is 'append only', they build up large 40GB+ chunk files on Linux servers and flag stuff within the file as deleted, without actucally deleting it.
So they probably only compact a file when it becomes mostly deleted entries.
They're probably using the same system for GMail, so even if you delete stuff, its not really deleted until the file store its on it compacted.
Hence the terms of service.
Sounds like someone found an old copy of VMS and installed it :)
Yea, flame away, but you know I'm right. You'd think Linux (or Windows, or OSX) would have some of those features after 30 freaking years...
Legacy System: One that doesnt have downtime while being moved across the country.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Hi,
Don't forget that while people will be allowed to have up to 1GB of emails in their mailbox, it doesn't mean Google will have users x 1GB of disk space. Most people won't use the 1GB of mailbox space.
I worked on the mail system of the largest provider in my country. We had 700,000 customers with 15 MB mailboxes and we had something like 1/10 of the disk space required if all the mailboxs were full. And this worked just fine.
Not only Google won't need all that disk space, bu they will probably purchase additional disk space as it becomes necessary. It's smarter to buy new hard disks later than all the disk space immediately, they'll be cheaper.
speculates in his blog that the real product Google is creating isn't web search or email, but a massively scalable, distributed computing platform.
That would be a bad business move: that's a small market. Furthermore, just because their product works well in-house doesn't mean it makes a good software or service product.
While they say they offer 1 GB for mailboxs, maybe they plan to compress mails as well.
Since most mails are plain text, they could compress them to save large amounts of disk space and thus, requires less hard disks and server nodes
Yahoo Groups have an option to automatically email some files to new members.
;-)
Needless to say, this has immediately been (ab)used by pr0n forums (e.g. HCMF). They slice the movies in parts, put it on a group, and then to get the movie all you have to do is join. No more hassle with reluctant servers or anemic download rates !
The only limitation to this scheme was that you needed to have a rather large mailbox, usually larger than what most free webmail services provide.
Well I guess that's no longer a problem...
My bet: GMail will soon be to pr0n storage what the Tower of Babel was to anitquity construction.
(Maybe that's the real reason why they're doing it after all
Thomanonymous Micowardni
Google's web cache and USENET archives are already skirting the edges of copyright law, because Google is copying, for commercial gain, content that is clearly not in the public domain and content for which nobody has ever given them permission to copy it. If they do this with Gmail, at least it's voluntary and explicit.
Of course, if you are worried about E-mail getting archived and falling into the wrong hands, well, there is nothing you can do. Everything you create on-line risks being stored and backed up somewhere. The only way you can be reasonably sure that you aren't being recorded is in a face-to-face meeting in a reasonably secure place and with a person you know and trust.
I see this as a great benefit for a lot of mailing lists, where the information is public. How easy would it be to just search for some keywords rather than reading through screen-fulls of irrelevant posts on a particular subject, especially since messages are kept after deletion? As far as personal email accounts are concerned, I do view this as a privacy issue.
email compresses, really, really well
I suspect they will have at least 5:1 compression ratio, and they aren't going to allocate one gigabyte per person the moment the person signs up. So the storage requirements aren't as daunting as one might initially imagine?
Also, their spam detection will probably be superb with as many people as you might expect to sign up and the quality of their search/compare algorithims.
is over at Tao Of Mac. The guy worked out the math for average quotas, prices, and even how much it will cost Microsoft to compete.
With bandwidth getting cheaper, I reckon it's just a matter of time before we see san.google.com. Google takes care of all the expensive issues of a SAN - all you do is plug'n'play. Still not suitable when speed is an issue, but it may be at some point.
Underholdning.info
With enough users and google's distributed architecture you could create a spam marking service pretty straightforwardly I'd think. Now THAT would be a service, especially if you opened it up for other people to use. Submit an md5 or similar hash, get a vote return back?
If this isn't a warning, what else is?
Right, of course, to get gigabyte email let me just give my email to them! I think gigabyte of spam is exactly what I need! (Oh, by the way, that was sarcasm!)
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
If there is no weakness like a plaintext attack, even if every atom in the universe were an opteron it would still take longer to brute force a 256Bit symetric or 2048bit asymetric key then our sun will exist.
Remember: Every bid DOUBLES time
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Anything confirming that it's not an April Fools' joke which was published after the 1st of April?
Email is one of the few applications that bring people back for many pageviews. Note how Google state on the GMail page that you'll only see 'relevant ads'?
;)
I've been seeing Adsense popping up on all sorts of new sites recently. Having ads delivered based on the content of your email is pretty clever. I wonder what adverts it will show when the spam comes rolling in?
...it's really great [sarcasm] to decide to use an email service based completely on open communications.
Lets see, how about advertisers start searching gmail.google.com for mentions of fast food outlets that I recently visited.
I just bought some new Lucky Brand jeans the other day. That Jeans company would be directly connected to me for advertising. probably cause I have a blog.
Email is for me, and message boards are for everybody. Can't some things just remain SACRED?
Greg
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
A few good ones:
Transmit content that may be harmful to minors
Illegally transmit another's intellectual property or other proprietary information without such owner's or licensor's permission
Promote or encourage illegal activity
Who decides what's harmful to minors? Google? will they ban my account for sending my friends offensive images/jokes?
If i email an mp3 will they use their compute power to check if I own the copyright? Could the RIAA force them to report me?
Since they're scanning the mail anyway, would they have to report users if words like 'civil disobidience' are in their messages? Could the government give them watch words?
No longer.
I hope that GMail is real - because it would solve a significant problem for me - though I'd really need GMail to support IMAP4 for my purposes...
I've three types of email I need to manage:
1) Secret, private emails - always with known contacts - encrypted.
2) Confidential email - again, known contacts only - stored only on my intranet - not sensitive - doesn't need encryption.
3) Public contact - frequently new or unknown contacts. Enquiries; replies from Usenet/mailing lists etc.
Types 1 and 2 are low volume and can be easily managed with current infrastructure. Tailored email addresses and white lists can virtually eliminate spam. Type 3, however, is a much bigger problem... because I can not easily control who contacts me. I think Gmail offers the hope of a solution here. For my purposes (at least) - given that Gmail would be used for initial contact only - I couldn't care less about the less than private nature of these communications. I don't really care if Google, law enforcement or even the government gets to see these messages - their content would be considered public. Provided that Gmail can be integrated into my current email system - such a service would offer an interesting and convenient alternative for "Type-3" email.
I for one welcome our new gigabyte email overlords.
There are a few sites, including this one which allow you to check any pop address from a web interface. Also seems to do imap and ssl, but I've not tried those.
Tres useful. Doesn't help your email forwarding situation though, sorry.
L
This guy pops up on The Register from time to time, and comes across as less balanced than average even by their standards.
Particularly he has a bee in his bonnet about Google. I've never found his shrill arguments very convincing.
I'm sure Google will go bad one day (perhaps when they've gone public, or when the founders leave), but for now they're relying on quality rather than marketing, which gets the thumbs up from me.
I'd trust them at least as much as Hotmail if I wanted such an account.
D.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
They fully intend and will make money off of this. imagine the advertising potential. they know that i looking for a car when i discuss one with the old lady, they know its gonna be a wagon. they know what my political affiliation is, so politicians and issues companies can beg the right people for dough hell, they'll know what i do for a living and where and with who. they could target ads that are simply worth a lot more than anything else i can come up with, sans breasts. they can spend a couple mill on this, if only to seize that much market. that isnt an ulterior motive either its obvious and completly great
So, heres a possibly nutty idea.. maybe instead of buying their own disks, would it be possible that GMAIL will be borrowing from file sharing technology and saving several copies of all our emails across a peer to peer network of users? I haven't actually read anything yet to say that GMAIL promises to be fast AS WELL as having a 1GB capacity... Could be done couldn't it?
People keep saying "how will Google limit people's accounts". The whole point is, Google is giving a gig because they want to gather as much data as possible, for their search analysis algorithm tuning and contextual ads. They've got a web text stream pouring in, a USENET feed, a news feed... now they want to add email as one of the main untapped sources of huge amounts of text. So they don't want to limit accounts. They're giving you free storage in exchange for providing them with tons of data that they can use to attract advertisers and better target their ads.
I just read the comments, and perhaps I missed it.
But can't you just encrypt the email before sending it???
Assuming you can use pop3, instead of a webmail system.
When you stop to think about it, package management could be a key factor in the smooth running of the Google Gmail cluster. What software would be used to make sure each one of those 100,000 mail-handling nodes was running the latest, most secure version of sendmail, qmail or postfix? We know Google uses Linux extensively. It is fairly safe to assume that they are using apt-get to sling packages. But what do the Slashdot community think about apt-get's long term suitability for these types of projects? Can the open-source, Free Software package management poster child scale to meet the 100K-node challenge? I look forward to hearing the community's response!
I'd be surprised if Google ever offered an IPO. It brings all kinds of headaches to the few people running the company and really doesn't give them anything they didn't already have.
The net result is just gobs of free money for early investors. The stock would probably be out of the price range of the casual investor within the first week. And then they'd have a bunch of fat cats breathing down their neck looking for the stock to go up a penny. Instead of comming up with neat little toys like they do now, they'd be comming up with neat little toys as long as they favorably affect the bottom line.
Look how many people already bitch whenever Google doesn't give them a favorable ranking. And they're not even paying anything.
As it is, they rake in piles of cash and can still have fun because it's not really that much of a business. They really don't answer to anybody. They find things that suck and then release their own version that doesn't if they feel like it. As soon as they go public, they've got lots of people to answer to.
If you want to make some money off of Google, set up a good web-site and use AdSense.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I'm still wondering whether this is an April Fools joke or not but if it isn't: We still REALLY need to find a way to get everyone to use GPG/PGP. With proper mailer support it is trivially easy. Joe Sixpack can do it and he won't even know he is doing it. If we all encrypted our mail google wouldn't be able to do a thing with it. Plus it wouldn't compress at all which would probably hose them up somewhere.
I have written up a blurb on why we should sign/encrypt here.
...but rather (all this according to the article) their own distributed, fault-tolerant Google Filesystem (GFS) [PDF]. Apparently each of their 1/2 depth 1U servers has only one or two drives. If a server fails (which happens routinely with 100k servers) then it's simply left in place and the data is automatically replicated onto another server from one of the redundant copies.
I'm wondering what happens when people figure out they can use Google's email system as a 1GB off site backup drive. How many accounts can I get? 2? 10?
I've written more about this here.
Oh, and I never thought G-Mail was a joke. There was grumbling about it in the days before April 1.
Gmail service is natural step in Google's provision, because Google actually *is* the Echelon. A capability of matching search activities and personalities is a missing feature for its controllers, for sure.
You can check Google's behavior difference in handling "normal" and "dangerous" 5-word queries by comparing amount of processing time. It differs by order of magnitude 10 or more. Google is definitely communicating somewhere *before* issuing a reply.
Varied results are given with traceroute communications to Google, and it would be an interesting community project to create a network map of near-to-Google topology. An example of device of interest is 64.233.175.250, just before Google machinery, as seen from Europe. It is supposedly part of Google network, but it's trip time is not adequate to be located in California. What this box is? And who does it serve?
There you are, staring at me again.
I read this as meaning that they won't go messing with their backups to purge your data, which is perfectly reasonable, especially for a free service. Backups are supposed to be write-once recordings. If you've got a problem with that, don't transmit sensitive data over a free webmail service. Nothing spooky here. In fact, I imagine every webmail service works this way. Gmail is just kind enough to warn you about this.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
When I first heard about GMail, it sounded great. But as more time goes by and the terms of service become known, it seems to me that GMail could be a problematic service. It would also seem to me that Google would try to use e-mail to build profiles of its users, which could eventually fall into the hands third parties. (Even if Google doesn't intend for that to happen right now, once it is a publically traded company things could change.)
So for right now, I would have to say no thank you.
So the girl's name's April and this gmail thingie was her birthday present?
In other news, this seems to be the only hidden page on the gmail server, there are so far only 4 pages on it.
TRUST.
i personally don't think the question here is the what-ifs and whos and whats that Gmail might mean. i think the core issue here is whether we are willing to entrust Google with that information.
Hotmail, Netscape Mail, @ddress, et. al., all provide a service similar to Gmail. the only real difference i can see (looking specifically at the privacy policies) is that Gmail is more open about their policies and is more willing to state openly that there is redundancy in their storage system. i'm sure Hotmail, et. al., have redundant storage for their email services, and that there are concerns similar to if not identical to the concerns addressed by the Gmail privacy policy.
i commend Google for being open about this, and because they specifically address it, i'm fully willing to open a Gmail account and use it for my personal email. hell, i'd use it for business email without a single worry.
why? i trust Google. they are opening up and telling me what they do with my emails and what happens to them. that's important to me. that's why i'm willing to trust them.
i, for one, welcome our new email overlords.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Providing relevant ads to e-mails is not all that dissimiliar to providing relevant ads to newsgroups postings, which we already find in Google Groups. Google also states in its TOS that if the e-mail is detected as being sensitive in nature, they won't be providing ads. As some posters have feared, I see no reason for Google to ever go manually data-mining to see if the ads really are relevant when they already have 845 million test messages, not to mention internal personal e-mails.
If you are concerned with a computer algorithm 'reading' your e-mails, you are probably a little paranoid. If you are concerned with Google harvesting your information and habits, keep in mind that they would probably do it to make the service better, and besides, if you own a credit card and have ever purchased anything online, there are services that allow people to purchase your information for circa. $20
If you are an honest advocate of privacy and feel a genuine fear, lobby your congressman to get the laws changed. Regardless, Google is the least of your privacy and identity theft concerns.
Go on, take the e-mail and run
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
If you go to the Gmail site...gmail.google.com, here is what it says....
m l#ads
"You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest."
And that links to this page
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.ht
"8. Are there ads in Gmail? There are no pop-ups or banner ads in Gmail. Gmail does include relevant text ads that are similar to the ads appearing on the right side of Google search results pages......"
I'd question whether people would be as receptive to targeted ads in their email, however. I often search with the aim of making a purchase, and will happily click on the Google ads if they are relevant. This is not so often the case with email, however - the only situations that I can think of where I'd be responsive to targeted ads would be pre-sales query responses from merchants, or the one or two price bulletins I'm subscribed to (e.g. if they can mention somewhere I can get X cheaper.) But these types of emails would not be half as common as my use of search.
So to me, GMail looks like a service that will be massively more expensive per user for Google, with a lower return from click-throughs.
Anyone have any ideas of other situations where these ads might be successful (e.g. clicked on)?
Americans already give their fingerprints out for ATM and debit/credit cards today. The vast majority of Americans have no qualms about recording their fingerprints if they believe it will add to their own security.
Another thing freedome advocates like you miss is that most people dont care if their information gets out, because, they have nothing to hide and they have nothing to lose.
I dont know about you, but I can find a lot more uses for a GB of space other than E-mail. Google is going to find out about a year after this thing's official release that 60-90% of the mail stored on Gmail will be Viruses/Spam.
What I would like to see instead of this thing would be something along the lines of online storage like XDrive but free. That way I can store files from anywhere in the world, using just a web browser to access them.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
... and I thought the military created SkyNet...
I think you're underestimating just how many people are getting fingerprinted for their jobs these days. If you work for the Government, they've got them on file. Ditto for military. And most non-profits including churches are requiring fingerprints and a background check if you will either be dealing with finances or children. You've got banks and grocery stores taking thumb-prints for ID. *sigh* Kind of scary how much info is out there. And yes, Google would indeed be in a good position for this kind of search. Makes "googling" for a person sound rather 1984ish...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Storing and processing the email of millions of users could be a good way to make PageRank more effective. What's a more valuable indicator of a page's importance than for its URL to be sent in an email ("hey! check this out" )?
Of course, their spam control would need to be stellar...
I would be first in line to buy hosting on Google clusters. If they are planning to offer virtual servers running Debian GNU/Hurd, Debian GNU/Linux, EROS or OpenBSD with fool root access, I am willing to instantly move all of my domains to Google, even if it costs more than my current provider.
Do you hear me, Google?
(Do you hear me, my current provider?)
What do you people think? Whould that be a good idea? Google might actually become Internet! Seriously. They are capable of hosting everything. Imagine how it would simplify spidering and indexing.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I might've overreacted a little bit. When I read that I have to give them my address, this whole "gigabyte email" idea instantly started to look much scarier than ever before. (As a sidenote I might ask: why have you made me your foe? I seriously cannot remember ever insulting you.)
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Is there a privacy statement that forbids encrypted email?
Imagine for a moment that this story was about Microsoft, and the ensuing madness that the statement "Maybe this is the first step of Microsoft trying to provide universal storage for everyone" would cause.
But because it's Google, Slashdot readers give them a free pass. What makes you all think that Google's intent is so purely benevolent? I would think that the suspicious nature of Slashdotters would regard such an expansive enterprise with much skepticism.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I thought this whole GMail thing was an april fool by Google, supported by a set of other sites, such as the german www.spiegel.de. Since a google search for GMail didn't turn up anything interessting I thought this to be a fact.
Can anybody 100% positively confirm that Google is infact going to start this service?
It actually does sound like an april fool to me.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
...I've just thought twice and read your comments. Youre talking about petabyte data clusters and how near impossible they are and how _Google_ isn't going to delete your mail and all that. /. beats it. :-)
I'd say the Google guys really had the rest of the world and even you geeks in for a ride, didn't they?
This IS the aftermath of an april fools joke. And really good one I might add. Until I'm actually using a thing called GMail delivered by Google I won't be convinced otherwise.
I was laughing because even Deutschlandfunk had the message about GMail in their science radio show on saturday, obviously not having gotten it. But seeing this on
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
sure the drives are cheap, but it isn't exactly free to backup 1PB.
I am not sure how much successful Gmail in the consumer marked due to concern of privacy etc , but once they perfect the technology this will be a great Corporate application,
G mail has everything a corporate email application needs . This will be perfect to support corporate document retentions rules etc. Also privacy is non issue here. Add a nice powerful GUI front-end, and some collabration features to this and you got an Outlook Killer. I guess Microsoft should be worried.
2) Who, *really* is going to use 1GB within the first 24 hours of gmail's activation? I think this is part hype and it may actually be a while before some folk start getting close to that limit. In other words, I think they have a little time to scale this depending upon demand.
--pete
"Anyone who uses Gmail (or Hotmail, or Yahoo, or *any* webmail) for confidential material is fooling themselves about its confidentiality,"
Does your statement mean to include Hushmail.com e-mail sent encrypted from one Hushmail user to another? It's my understanding that that is pretty secure. Or am I wrong?
If you work for the government or military, you dont count.
If "non profits" are using fingerprints as some sort of guarantee against letting in a potential monster, well, they are insane. In the UK they have just had a brutal example of how these background checks can fail disasterously.
Banks and grocery stores; this is a voluntary submission. Also, a grocery store is not going to be sharing your prints with the French Government, and all the other EU governments simultaneously. This is the difference, compulsion and the default sharing of your information. I'm sure that if people in the USA knew that their fingerprints AND their complet bank history were going to be shared world wide when they give their fingerprints that they would think twice about submitting to this sort of thing so redily.
We have to think clearly about the distinction between different scenarios where fingerprints are used. Compulsion is what I am against, that, and the sharing, storage and correlating of personal data to a unique and indelible identifier without the explicit, per usage, consent of the identified.
And to quote a great Slashdotter, "They are already half way up your ass, so why not push it all the way in?" is not the best way to live!
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
Spymac has already launched the first free 1GB email service today. Yeah, they got the idea from Google, but they were able to implement it in four days.
*sits back because he knows he's too late to get modded up enough to be seen*
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
IANAL, but...
I think you have it backwards: Google has no copyright issue with usenet archives, but does with e-mail. When you write to a newsgroup, you know your (automatically copyrighted) work will be distributed throughout the internet, so there's an implied license. This does not exist with private e-mail, so Google cannot publish it.
I should buy some cement.
... failed systems. It might not be cost effective for google to deal with them, but I bet you could piece together a lot of functioning boxes from the scrappage.
...and far more people get dl's than passports. I saw this post and remembered my father saying something about my state considering requiring prints for licenses, then some googling got me this: http://www.networkusa.org/fingerprint/page4/fp-04- page4-winners-losers.html
And if you object to following a link that old, check this out: http://www.kotv.com/pages/viewpage.asp?id=50616
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
Gmail is NOT April Fools it seems... Check out www.gmail.com I am assuming the e-mail addresses will be somebody@gmail.com, and NOT google.com as people have thought. I have already put my name in to be notified for any beta testing. You can do this at the GMail Site in the FAQ. What worries me is that if they're offering 1GB per account... If Gmail is going to turn into a huge warez/porn/etc dump.
We are brainwashed agains MS.
As are the competition authorities in both the US and the EU and most specialized press.
But you are ok MS fanboy, you have the absolute truth, facts be damned.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It's kind of sad, but I think I'm going to have dreams about gmail for a while now.
It's like having google search and my webmail all in one place. Of course, I don't really use webmail right now (using kmail) but still it'd be pretty cool. Might just change how I use email completely.
They can use the same compression for attachments as they do for spam/emails. Think about it. If you send a power-point presentation to 10 Gmail accounts, Google only stores it once. Add to that an ability to compare newly uploaded files with those existing on the system, and you've got incredible compression (How many people will store the exact same Britney.mp3 file as an attachment?)
Imagine your mother is opening a day care center, is anyone going to start screaming in horror, picketing, filing lawsuits? Probably not.
Now imagine that your mother has been convicted of making and selling kiddie porn.
Whoops! Maybe reputation makes a difference.
Infuriate left and right
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It took about 15 seconds to search Orkut for "April" and find:
9 42 57033126
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=112460702
(April Buchheit: 80% trusty, 70% cool, 70% sexy)
Privacy is a two-way street, Google!
It is intereting to see a group of people that are always so quick to talk about security, and how leet they are, then go nuts over google storing e-mail. USE GPG. Encrypt your private e-mails and no body will read them.
If Gmail promised to do a 7x DOD wipe of you e-mails when you close your account, plus purge every old backup tape they have of your e-mails, within 10 minutes of your account closing, you should STILL encrypt private e-mail.
So much for talking about it and not doing it! Anyone who uses encryption doesn't care about google's privacy policy, as things are already as private as they get.
Has it occured to anyone that keeping residual copies of e-mails, possibly even for a time after the account is deleted, is necessary, even required, to back up the data? Google's privacy policy is unique in that it tells you what they do with your information, rather than (only) what they'll let other people do with your information.
The other large privacy concern here, that of ad-delivery, requires Google to scan e-mails for keywords. Yep. Big woop. They do that every time you search, you know -- and in the e-mails, their privacy policy specifically says that no humans will read it without specific permission to solve e.g. technical problems.
Tin foil hats can go back in the closet, boys.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
massively scalable, distributed computing platform
Rather, how about
which makes the most sense to me.Google already has a special advantage in knowing what kinds of search terms consumers are throwing at them, as well as which of the presented links are being clicked from which IP addresses. That kind of knowledge could actually help them to maintain their grip on the search market compared to newcomers.
By offering an email service where they can comb through the email archive using search technologies, they can determine, for example, whether ad-sponsored emails work, what makes them work better, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
then why the hell are you using some 3rd party service to hold that email. As is, most email is unsecured and technically stored many places on transit anyway (caching effects and the like). To top that off, even if you decide to do it all yourself on your own machines, I work with forensic tools that can recover shit that had been written over as many as 20 times previously and reconstruct what was there. So if you're REALLY concerned about your privacy or the security of your communication service you had better stick to inviting your friends into darkened, soundproof rooms... talking at a whisper and without moving your lips just to be sure.
Basically it boils down to the rediculous nature of any complaint that something in the digital realm... especially on the internet... actually be "secure" or "private". OK, so there happen to be pretty nice encryption protocols that do pretty nicely, but they're not used all that often on items deemed "less than critically sensitive" in the large scheme of things. These people generally give me large headaches and the desire to go postal on little kids or something....
Lets face it... we'll always have to deal with "end users"... scary huh.
I don't know all about this... but still... the news is for the 1st of April, Aprils Fool Day... Unless I see that service working at full speed I'll have doughts about that... :|
should be renamed to googlenet...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C. Clarke)
I'm signing up for this as soon as I can - not because I want it or need it at the moment, but because if I'm going to use it at some point in the future, I'd rather be myname@gmail.com rather than myname3478998634@gmail.com
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I don't know all about this... but still... the news is from the 1st of April, Aprils Fool Day... Unless I see that service working at full speed I'll have doughts about that... :|
I like the concept of your troll account, but the execution is lacking.
...because I am [a] stupid American.
First, you shouldn't have your subject line be capitalized. This gives it away as an obvious troll; you want people to actually read your comment as if they are expecting a non-troll. Just punctuate it as you would in a normal communication.
Second, the spelling of your account is bad. The "S" in Stupid American should not be capitalized, and it should be "a stupid American" instead of "Stupid American". That way, it won't sound like a non-English-speaking person is saying it. Unless you are portraying a non-English-speaking person making fun of Americans, in which case I guess it's ok, but I still think the "S" should not be capitalized.
Third, I think you should have leading periods in your comment to indicate continuation with a slight pause. This will get the effect across better.
Exampe:
Subject: I have the right to spy on anyone I like...
Comment:
If you follow my advice, I think you will go down as one of the most loved and hated trolls in Slashdot history. Until we meet again.
+4 Interesting?!?!?!?!? I think slashdot needs to rethink it's moderation system.
Google was founded in 1996 so how could they have sold computers to nazis? Hitler committed suicide in 1945. Since the founders of google were in college in 1996, that would have made them really old college kids.
Moderators can be really stupid sometimes. -1 troll for the parent post would have been a lot better
Remember that this was a time that most people did not have broadband. These Warez rings would get someone who did have broadband (normally through school or work), and have them send an email to themself via AOL, attaching whatever file they wanted to share.
Then, they would go into some AOL private room, and run something not unlike IRC's SDFind. However, what made this really clever was that because the file had already been uploaded to AOL's mail server, the person "hosting" the file only had to upload once, and from then on the file existed on AOL's mail server. Therefore, you had a system like SDFind, but with no queues.
If you were looking for, lets say, RedHat ES2.1, you would enter a server room, and type @find RedhatES2.1. If anyone in that room had it in their mailbox, the script would notify you. You would then type @get "filename", and they would automatically forward you the email that included the attachment in question. You were then free to download that file at your leisure, without having to wait for queues, etc. The person hosting the file had sent it to you with a very minimal bandwidth impact.
I fully anticipate someone writing a similar piece of software for IRC using gMail.
ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
Gmail screenshot
so it's simple, simple is good.
can't wait for it goes public.
"I'd guess it's safe to say that Google now does more processing than anyone else on Earth."
I'd put my money om the US Gov't. Specifically it's intelligence divisions. And of them, probably either CIA or NSA. But Homeland Secuity and IRS could take their place in a few years.
Pay no attention to either of these fools.
Nice try Chris.
Somebody may have already pointed it out, but...
the version of the Gmail Privacy Policy is v. 040104.
...because Google will store every piece of spam exactly once. (Well, actually, their storage system is redundant so it will probably be stored a handful of times. But that's all.)
.signature file appears at the end of every email I send. That .signature could be stored once and then referred to by a pointer. More savings.
If 10,000 Gmail users receive a piece of spam, Google will index the spam (storing it 5 times for backup purposes) and each of the 10,000 users will get a tiny little index number that points to the indexed spam.
This system will be pretty efficient, because most of the email in the world is highly redundant, if only because most of it is spam.
If Google engineers cared to do so, they could also do things like break your emails into chunks and index each chunk. An identical
Of course, a good question to ask is: if Google starts allowing users to flag spam for other users, how long will it be before the spammers adapt? Spammers can certainly make every piece of spam different from every other piece if they want to. They may be doing this already... I am not up to speed in the world of spam and anti-spam.
As for the free online storage... have you ever tried emailing an attachment to yourself with your web-based email? Hmmm... "store files from anywhere in the world... use a web browser to access them." Yep, sounds about right to me. Although attachments will probably be limited in size, as some people speculate, so don't try storing any feature films or anything.
photoplankton
sure they may be developing the worlds biggest baddest hammer yet, but what exactly are the nails?
bio seems to be the only nail worth hitting of yet. even with "infinite" processing power, we still wouldnt know what to do for audio and video reckognition. the problem is less and less a question of "more" and more and more a question of "how".
For the day comes when we find those nails, DragonFly BSD, god willing, strives to fit the bill for the best hammer out there. A new non-mutex locking mechanism designed to facilitate message passing and async design and single system imaging provide low level and high level ends to the google goal.
And, speaking for myself and myself alone, they need your help.
just 10 of these storage systems and you got almost 1,5PB diskspace :))
http://www.sun.com/storage/highend/9980/index.xml
I imagine this would be great for subscribing to and reading public mailing lists. No need to "read on the web" as with Yahoo! groups.
Most Americans I've talked to don't so much love freedom as take it for granted...
DNA just wants to be free...
They'll potentially know more about you than you know about yourself.
One option is to create another Google applicance, the GMail appliance, to again sell their service to corporate clients in the same out-of-the-box fashion as in the Google search appliance.
just call me cynical.
Or sell out mails to the feds!!
So, can you reject unencrypted email addressed to you at gmail? Such email can easily contain private information and there is no guarantee that people will cooperate and download your public key and encrypt their email to you.
This screams of use by the gov! Isn't this what Eschelon is?
http://www.echelonwatch.org/
What are you people whining about??? It's FREE. As in beer. If you are using a Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail account for sensitive info, then you deserve to have it stolen/misused/abused. You get what you pay for. TANSTAAFL.
I will be signing up as soon as I can when they roll it out for _email_. Why? Simply because, how many people out there have extremely dull, hard to remember email accounts like joesmith2004@yahoo.com or js_in_us@yahoo.com or jsmith1214@hotmail.com? Too many. And I for one will try to at least be the first to get linux@googlemail.com or geek@googlemail.com, something that is easy to remember. Even if those are taken by squatters, I'm sure I can think of better. And with the branding placed behind google, I ensure the memorability of the address. It's in par with why people like getting the 212 area code phone number, or a post office box in a specific zip code/post office. The branding can't be overlooked -- on top of the potential of getting a valuable, unique and memorable email name leads to a very desireable service.
Linux at home
Isn't 1gig too much just for email ?
...
All my mails (including a lot of spam) since 2000 takes about 122mb uncompressed...
Would be nice if we could use this for file storage too then I would use my gig... You could send files to A lot of ppl without any bw costs
I really wonder what the max attachment size will be!
Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the law Love is the law, love under will Capital drives the will of mankind
If you'd read the PDF about the Google file system elsewhere in this thread, you'll see that google has single filesystems that are bigger than this; and better fault-tolerance at that.
If a few drives in the StorEdge fail, you'd probably have to replace them to continue to have a reliable system, right? The beauty of the Google system is that is something breaks, you don't have to do anything. It's fault tollerance heals itself.
According to these lawerz, "Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, any company with more than 500 shareholders is subject to public reporting requirements as well as the SEC's proxy and insider-trading rules"
My guess is that they gave too many people equity, so they'll have all the disadvantages of a public company anyway. At that point you may as well be liquid.
So after RTFPdf and realizing how much I love watching the degrag screens in 9x (would make a great screen saver), the question begs to be asked: Where can I get a home sized version of this to play with, possibly between three to five computers and realistic chunck sizes?
Ugh. Guys, they are just being up front about what has always been true. E.g. do you think admins at your university went through old backup tapes expunging your account when you graduated? No.
No, but that's your fault for dealing with people who won't cooperate with you and having them send e-mail to such an "untrusted" place.
Danish != nationality
there is no delete button in Gmail
Nope, currently most everything is done using a JS dropdown. Personally I'd prefer a few more buttons!
Da Blog
1 GB of storage, and with IMAP or POP3
GMail currently is web-only for users, no POP or IMAP.
Da Blog
Yes, it's real.
Yes it is.
Da Blog
Hey, give them a break, at least they're honest about it.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Yep, that and at least they're being honest about it.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
http://fury.com/article/1990.php
> Encrypt your private e-mails and no body will read them.
Yes, that's precisely the problem with P/GP/G!
KeS
Google is the internet!
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Needless to say, the comments here are a sociologist's wet dream.
But I'm no sociologist, so my comments will take a different tack.
First off, I say we put this whole thing into some perspective. The question with Gmail is not "is my data (including communication(s)) safe?" The question is, "relative to the similar service I use now, is Gmail safe?"
Personally, I'm going to take up Gmail simply because I'm of the inclination that it is much, much better than Yahoo! or Hotmail email services. I think it will be more secure, and I believe that it will be better in every other respect, as well.
I will treat my use of Gmail with as much trust as I treat my (prior) use of Yahoo! and Hotmail. Right now, I have 'personal' communications over a free web-based account, but nothing is said or done which would bother me were it to be aired as a headline on CNN (and it wouldn't be).
From my background as a student of history (literally, at the moment), I am fully aware that no communication or transaction is inherently private for all time. The unusual thing is that lightspeed communications (radio, telephone, internet, etc.) are relatively new, and it is therefore difficult to use the past (history) as a lense through which we may examine the "present." Because this situation is unusual and relatively "new," it is very frightening to some, very exhilarating to others, and a simple curiosity to yet others.
~UP
Eat the Path.
If you and the people you primarily email with encrypted everything, wouldn't you end up with the 1 GB email account, and Google would end up with nothing but a database full of "**begin PGP signed message..." announcements and public keys?
I guess they can still index all the spam and public mailing list messages you get. But it seems that doing this would let you have the account, while eliminating most of the privacy concerns.
Additionally, you can avoid their advertising for a "nominal fee" according to their "About Gmail" page:
6. Does Gmail support automatic forwarding and POP3 access?
Not at the moment, but Google believes in helping people access information whenever and however they want to do so. Your email should never be held hostage by a service provider. In the future you will be able to access Gmail messages from non-Gmail accounts for free or at a nominal fee.
Depending on how nominal that fee is, I'd be quite happy with a good email client that handles my PGP encryption and decryption on the fly, a bunch of friends that all use PGP too, and 1 GB of POP3 access from Google, with no indexing of personal messages, and no advertising.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Or at least the 1GB quota.. which by the way, I just found out that I would be over, as I have just over 1GB of e-mail in my private cyrus imap server.
Google rakes in a billion dollars a year -- netting $100M (penultimate paragraph). Half a million is impulse-buying gum-and-candy pocket money to them.
As for having enough disk space -- these people have already cached the entire internet. I'd say they have plenty of firepower in this area.
To those who are worried that they'll do something sinister with their access to your mail -- who's to say that whoever you're using now (whether freemail, regular POP3, or anything else (even links in the traceroute chain from sender to recipient)) aren't already peeking?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Dammit. Time to implement hash busters in my resume text.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Yahoo! Mail.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
No Text, Go Away!
Do you lie on surveys?
...if you don't like their grubby little index bot crawling through your private bits.
Google has some swing in the tech industry...
I believe Intel's decisin to base their future processors off the Pentium M core are a result of Google's insistence that better power consumption was more important than raw performance per chip.
Google killed Itanium. Long live Pentium M.
http://news.com.com/2100-1006-5181256.html
M2 offers features similar to GMail: it keeps all mail in one big glom, but offers "access points" (automagically indexed views) by all messages, unread, sent, drafts, contacts, active contacts, active threads, attachments, custom views and more. All searches are saved as views.
When I abandoned my old MUA and imported my old mail, all old folders were converted to custom views, but I find that I seldom refer to them and I haven't needed to make any more, because M2's automatic built-in views cover my needs.
And all this happens in the (relative) privacy of your own machine. I have no fiduciary interest in Opera Software, and I don't play one who has on television. I just think M2 is a good (not perfect) commercial product, and probably safer (more private) than GMail.
See "Opera Software - M2 E-mail Client"
Regards, -- Chris Johansen
...and a review is here:
http://miscoranda.com/102
"Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity" - Machine Beauty
This is a point that is overlooked:
If/when Google goes public, they'll stop being Google. They'll be an entirely different company with the name "Google"... and all of the power and resources that it entails. (As well as extra $$$ from the IPO, but that hardly matters with a brand as strong as Google.)
However, now we run into confidentiality issues. Of course the file is already compressed with gzip or bzip2, but will Google's text analysis algorithms be designed to decompress files and index the contents? (Since virus scanning software like MailScanner already does this, I'd guess the answer is yes.) Most of the information that's sent to us is proprietary, and some of it may be governed by rules like HIPAA. The obvious solution is to encrypt the compressed file before shipping it, of course.
There's also the problem of deleting last Tuesday's message before sending the new one. I suppose I could script lynx for this. Any other suggestions (other than manually deleting it from a web browser each day)?
As of 2004-04-06T12:27-05:00
For those of you who can't see it, it appears to be a page with an asian looking girl smiling and hugging a white looking guy.
P.S. Happy Birthday April, whoever you are.
Good. I just thought for a while that I might've insulted you or otherwise written something inappropriate even though that was never my intention.
That would mean that I couldn't possibly be farther from being a nominee for your foe, yet I have strangely become one nonetheless. As much as I'd love to believe otherwise, it suerly looks more like something personal.
I don't know what are you talking about.
Thank you. That was very kind. If I ever stop making sense again, please tell me about it before calling me a foe in front of the whole Slashdot community.
Fair enough. I'd like to apologize Google for that accusation.
Your felling is not as paranoid as it might seem. I actually made some experiments and their advertisements seem to be correlated with the keywords I use in my searches. That's why I routinely change cookies and User-Agent headers, using lots of automated searches with random keywords. It seems to work so far. But I often think that maybe if I wasn't using anonymous proxies, they could track my IP. I don't know.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Yeah, right. And what happens to the Great Benefit of having all your mail at one place and being able to search it?
What do you do when you need to find something - open all your mails one by one and decript them?
I cannot be sure about that, for I have no idea who you are, now can I?
Not only boring but also childish and stupid.
Incidentally, if you'd like to know exactly when and why your good friend GooberToo made me his foe, you should read this thread. He has called me an "idiot" and "dolt" dozens of times using such phrases as:
as a supposed refutation of my reasoning. Finally, this: "You are the first dolt, to ever make my foe list. What an idiot." is his sophisticated explanation of the reason why I became his foe, which you today consider to be an argument against my person in your private moderation system ruled by personal preferences of people like GooberToo.
Please read all of my and GooberToo's posts of this thread and draw your own conclusions. You will see how I tried to stay calm and never use any invectives even though he kept insulting me in every post and almost in every sentence. Please also notice that I have not made him my foe even after this farce. If part of your private moderation system is giving negative points to "foes of your friends" then I would strongly suggest giving this idea a second thought.
You claim that censoring my texts improves your Slashdot Experience and you ask why does it bother me? It bothers me because I would prefer a constructive critic.
Any privacy of those lists would be impossible with "foes of friends" and "friends of friends" as all you would have to do is make some person your only friend and you would instantly know all of her friends and foes.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
...since those are text ads.