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Speculating About Gmail

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the talk-is-cheap dept.

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?"

15 of 612 comments (clear)

  1. That's all well and good-- by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    but can it cook my TV dinner, too?

    1. Re:That's all well and good-- by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Dont know, but maybe this man can cook your dinner for you?

      Or failing that, Michael could come over and share a few jokes with you.

  2. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    big up to my peeps

  3. Happy birthday April! by ObviousGuy · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    From all of us!

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Happy birthday April! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Ooo.. diss.

  4. Can it cook my TV dinner? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Im funny enough to be an editor.

  5. Re:Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    but can it cook my TV dinner?

  6. w00t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I got dibs on goatse@gmail.com!

  7. Re:It's great by Cinquero · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Well, since notebooks are widely distributed today, why don't they just rewrite Mozilla's mail application to do such a thing?

  8. Re:Only one? by chills42 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    you have to apply through social security... thats how they're gonna keep SS aliva

  9. Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I get Googley eyes when I behold the Goatse

  10. Re:Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    What the fuck are you talking about?

  11. Re:Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    RTFA u PHUCKER

  12. Gthin Gclients. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    If they can offer a Gig per person, why couldn't they offer network logons via Google branded thin clients to a full desktop X environment? They could sell desktop environments for 10 bucks a year or even let advertising fund it.

  13. Re:disk space is cheap. by drGreg · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Great, now when I'm getting spammed, I'm going to be able to get additional adds for .