Google's Sergey Brin Talks on Gmail's Future

de la mettrie writes "Sergey Brin of Google has been discussing the future of GMail in a recent eWeek article. He says that the ongoing beta test will likely take about six months, and that the implementation of mail forwarding, POP access, mail encryption and even RSS feeds is being considered."

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For more answers

[SpanishInquisition]

you can always reach him at sergey_brin@hotmail.com

Don thy Tinfoil Hat.

[grub]

already slashdotted, here's the text:


Steve Gillmor : Hi Sergey, thanks for taking the time to do this interview.
Sergey Brin : My pleasure, Steve.
Gillmor : So why gmail? It sounds like an expensive endeavor.
Brin : Yes, it really is. We have to weigh the curve of user data and disk space then constantly keep ahead of the users' requirements.
Gillmor : Can you give us a ballpark figure as to cost?
Brin : No, not really. It's being paid for by the NSA, actually.
Gillmor : The NSA? Why?
Brin : They've realized that they have to put on a "friendlier face" to the public. Being that Google already has a huge infrastructure, it only made sense that they use it. They approached us over a year ago with this idea.
Gillmor : The NSA wants to manage the email of literally hundreds of millions of net users? Don't the privacy implications concern you?
Brin : No. The NSA have told me, in fact our contact wrote it on a cocktail napkin, that they wouldn't snoop user mail. They are really nice people. Think about it, who would you rather trust with your personal email, Hotmail & Microsoft or Google & the NSA? I think the answer is obvious.
Gillmor : In all honesty, I don't think the answer is clear.
Brin : Sure it is, if Hotmail "fills up" you're out of luck, with gmail the NSA have gratiously offered to let us use some of their disk storage on their Cray and SGI SANs. Like I said, really nice people.
Gillmor : Can you give is the name of your contact?
Brin : [answers cell call, hangs up] This interview is over.