Microsoft's Ballmer: Google Reads Your Mail

Anonymous writes "A piece of video has emerged in which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says of Google, 'they read your mail and we don't.' Evidently, it was part of a lengthy discussion on the future of the software business model, and whether advertising could support free consumer software. Ballmer said it doesn't work, at least when it comes to email. '"That's just a factual statement, not even to be pejorative. The theory was if we read your mail, if somebody read your mail, they would know what to talk to you about. It's not working out as brilliantly as the concept was laid out." Ballmer isn't the first to fire salvos at Google's Gmail privacy policy. Privacy advocates have been critical over the policy almost since the beginning, but the popularity of the service has skyrocketed nonetheless.'"

Comments

Yeah!

[darkob]

I for one salute our new Google overlords!

Can... not... resist

[ivlad]

In Soviet Russia E-mail reads your Ballmer

Re:What a crock

[speaker of the truth]

Google's Privacy Policy

We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties That certainly suggests they're mining data. It doesn't say outright it won't mine, given the concerns of Google's policies you think they'd make that fairly explicit if they didn't mine. Also:

We review our data collection, storage and processing practices to ensure that we only collect, store and process the personal information needed to provide or improve our services. Considering Google believes that targeted ads with an increase in how targeted they are is part of its services it provides, I'd say they certainly leave themselves open to the ability to mine data.