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

Re:What a crock

[speaker of the truth]

a bot collecting statistics from your email (which you knowingly agreed to if your using gmail) is not a criminal offence. It isn't a criminal offence. However it is something people should be made aware of time and time again. Despite the frequent claims of Gmail infringing on the user's privacy I did not think they did it. I now know exactly how much of my e-mails they investigate and I'll be migrating away from Google as a result (keeping it as a search engine only with me not accepting any of their cookies).

Re:What a crock

[speaker of the truth]

If you don't wish to send postcard email, encrypt it. So are you saying you would be perfectly happy if a router somewhere on the internet forwarded your e-mail to a computer in addition to you and read your e-mail and from it created a profile and then used this profile to call you on your phone, or to send salesmen to your door or to send you snail mail? Because by your logic, this is perfectly acceptable to do to non-encrypted e-mails. I imagine most people would disagree.