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Gmail Commentary and Responses
Phil Windley writes "In his inimitable style, Tim O'Reilly tells us why GMail matters. The piece is entitled, 'The Fuss About GMail' but that doesn't begin to properly identify the real meat of what Tim's saying. Tim does discuss some of the privacy concerns on GMail and why he's not concerned, but he also breaks new ground on why GMail is not just another free email system. For example, Tim talks about how GMail might herald an era of large centralized computing and calls for APIs to allow GMail content to be move back and forth between it and other systems." Reader chris mansley writes "Google is quietly responding all the flak being given to their new email service. They have added a statement to quell the growing list of concerns. No more keeping email forever is at the top of the list. The reviews have been sparse on details and screenshots, but now Google is providing a sneak peek here and here." The only thing I didn't like about Gmail was their apparent intention to keep your mail forever, regardless of your wishes. Since they've now clarified that they don't plan to do that, it doesn't seem like there's much of a problem any more. Yahoo and MSN already link your searches on their respective engines with your account profiles on their respective free email services, and no one seems to care (maybe because no one uses MSN or Yahoo as a search engine these days, but still).
If you've got a trust-nobody mentality then what Google has to say means nothing, they're going to rip up their privacy policy and send every e-mail that goes through their system directly to John Ashcroft using their PageRank sorting technology to indicate which e-mails are most relavant to his desire to repeal every amendment in numbered order...
Of course, if you're sane, you trust Google because if they really wanted to screw the world over, they simply could decide that since their search engine is so good, everybody needs to pay $25 a month to keep accessing it... or decide to start logging all search queries to a user-specific cookie... or just take their bat and ball and go home. They've already got enough power to mess with us even worse than Gmail could be, and they've yet to be caught abusing any of that power or going back on their word.
That's how trust is really built... by letting them have the ability to screw up and seeing that they don't manage to do so. I'd certainly trust my e-mail with Google more so than I'd trust some of the other major "free e-mail" services out there.
Isn't this true? What is the difference?
I like this approach, it makes you think about what you say. Maybe some emails shouldn't be sent. If you have to worry about it, you shouldn't do it.
Jeoin
I think they've clarified they privacy policy to a level that us geeks should easily be able to understand...
When you hit "delete", more often than not in computer land, your data is not immediately rendered unrecoverable. In most operating systems, deleted files are ushered over to a "holding bin" for a final clear-out command to really get rid of them in case we want to change our mind. Once the OS finally lets go of the file, the file system often takes the short cut of just removing the index pointers to the file and/or marking the space as "unused", but leaving the data still spinning on the drive until something eventually wants to use that space... let's face it, a "quick format" doesn't have time to hit every track on the drive, it's taking a shortcut and that's what makes it "quick".
So, really, they're just saying that in order to make their magical mega-system work, "delete" isn't going to mean "Expunge it all right away!" but simply "Put in the pile that'll be discarded the next time the garbage collection process comes by." Therefore, they'll need to keep your "deleted" e-mails for an undisclosed length of time... they don't intend on keeping it forever, although they have to word the privacy policy in a way that might be misread that way because to do less just wouldn't be being honest.
If you don't have root access to the e-mail system where you work, you don't really know if "delete really means delete" on that system either. Your boss may in fact have access to your e-mail... you might as well assume that they do unless you know otherwise.
I'm really impressed with how Google has handled themselves since their inception. They have certainly been innovative, but most importantly they employ things that aren't seen enough in today's business world: openness and integrity.
I'm inherently paranoid (or, perhaps more appropriately, private) and always take things with a grain of salt - especially when it's coming from a business the size of Google.
That said, I don't blame Google for their desire to recoup costs by generating targeting advertisement. I'm very much impressed with how open they have been about the procedures they will use to actually target the ads. With this recent letter that so quickly and openly answers concerns made public recently, I'm happy to say here is a company that has been widly successful - all while being true gentlemen.
At least with an e-mail service, Google will be standing on two feet when this happens. People will want to check their GMail no matter what search they are using. Google isn't even close to the financial power of Microsoft right now, so it needs to prepare for the attack...