California Senate Passes Preemptive Strike Against Gmail

Technically Inept writes "The California Senate has passed a measure to force Google to limit search capabilities on Gmail to real-time, with no records. What if I want them to search my mail in advance?"

Comments

Re:Only here, apparently.

[Yokaze]

> What's different about Google other than they explicitly tell you they're going to do it.

The difference is, that Google and other free email services have a commercial interest in it, while said third parties, with all probability, have not.

Creating the infrastructure to scan emails requires an investment, which has to pay off.

Those third parties are providing the bandwith for several parties. I assume that most companies wouldn't be very happy about having their connection tapped. So, not scanning any traffic is in their own commercial interest.

The legal implications by having the ability to scan emails and/or traffic are another reason they have no interest.

OTOH, Google (and others) can easily use that profiled data to generate revenue by targeting ads on pages they generate. Said third parties have no such mean.

Google and others are merely prohibited from profiling. They can still generate revenue from targeting ads by real-time data, like they do with their search-engine.