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The Man Who (Really) Makes Google Tick
An anonymous reader writes "Like his friends Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Craig Silverstein abandoned his PhD studies at Stanford to become employee No.1 and technology director at Google. While building the search engine in a garage, never in his wildest dreams did he think Google would become what it is today. Not only is it the envy of software giant Microsoft, Google continues to redefine the technology market with its creativity and tenacity. In this in-depth interview, Silverstein discusses a wide range of issues including the backlash against Gmail among privacy advocates, the company's cultural changes and its shifting reliance on PageRank."
Email never has and never will be a secure form a communication. Nothing is currently stopping the government from snooping on your email from other mail providers (e.g. yahoo, msn, aol). If you truly care about the privacy of your email, you really should be encrypting it.
Yes, but the other providers aren't archiving your messages, and providing a nifty interface to search and sort them. If they want to read my mail, they're gonna have to work at least a little bit for it!
Drop the PhD study where right now he would probably be teaching at a college to kids who really couldn't care...
There are plenty of Ph.D. drop-outs that signed up with other companies that looked just as promising as Google and didn't make it. This sort of career choice is basically a lottery ticket with a rather high cost of entry--even if you ever manage to get back to grad school after your failed stint at a startup, it's going to be hard to get back into research.
If you want to make money, a Ph.D. is the wrong choice to begin with--go into business or finance or something like that. If you change your mind about getting a Ph.D. halfway through, again, there are far better career choices than to get involved with some startup.
Sign up with a startup in a technical capacity only if you feel passionate about the product or the work.
I agree with the rest of your post, but this...
... with Gmail or Yahoo you have none other then to bend over and hope you deleted anything that could harm you.
How about not emailing/doing stuff that could provide evidence/harm you in the first place?
There may be worries for some situations, but for the majority of people... don't break any laws/talk about it in email, and there yah go - no concern.
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This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!
You wouldn't be saying that if it was Microsoft with the mysterious aura
Normal people worry me!