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

What a crock

[nacturation]

Yes, Google "reads" your email in order to serve up context-sensitive advertisements. Microsoft also "reads" your email because if they didn't read your email, they wouldn't be able to transmit it to your browser to be displayed on-screen. That Microsoft chooses to read your email but still serves up irrelevant, obtrusive advertisements is their problem.

Re:What a crock

[rilister]

Well, I guess it all depends if they reference historical information to serve those ads or not.

If I were google, I'd build up a statistical record of what words come up most often per user which would be real useful in deciding what "the doors" means in context: is an ad for a record shop relevant or Home Depot?

Then, of course, that statistical record would start to become an accurate record of who you are after a while. Anyone know the answer?

Re:What a crock

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between RELAYING data, and MINING it.

Re:What a crock

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between MINING data, and READING it.

Re:What a crock

[Macthorpe]

So what, M$ wont read your email, they will just monitor their (P)OS as it reads every file on your hard disk I think something outrageous like that actually requires you to back it up with a source, don't you?

Re:What a crock

[timmarhy]

ermm, no.

no matter how much you'd like to dramatise it, a bot collecting statistics from your email (which you knowingly agreed to if your using gmail) is not a criminal offence.

People don't use gmail for privacy, they use it for it's great features and large storage. if google want's to collect data on my account and throw up targeted ads for me why should i give 2 shakes of a donkey's dick about it? they aren't scamming me or keeping tabs on my sex life or political agenda - their selling advertising space, nothing more.

Re:What a crock

[kcbanner]

Ok firstly:
This is something called "digital" at some point something is going to actually read your message! Yes! It will! If your scared why not encrypt all your email? The so called "people" reading this email will not be able to see it plaintext, and the machines digest it as normal.
Everything reads the goddamn mail, its information going over wires. Your analogy breaks down with the real mail because it never has to be opened to be transmitted...email has to be "read" by all the damn routers it goes through, smtp servers, etc.
In conclusion, I wish everyone would get some sense and realize that real mail has a separate set of rules than email.

Re:What a crock

[Aqua OS X]

It's also worth noting that Hotmail doesn't send or receive many of its messages. Microsoft is going that extra mile by making sure that we also don't read our email.

Re:What a crock

[noidentity]

I'm a robot, and reading data IS mining to me, you insensitive clod!

Re:What a crock

[somersault]

Everyone knows that Microsoft doesn't do open source >.> *ba doom tish*

Re:What a crock

[RedWizzard]

Now here is a interesting point which no one has tackled yet. When I go out to my letter box, and open by letter box and look inside my letter box I see 'my' mail, it is no longer the mail of the people who sent it to me, it is my mail, and any unauthorised person who attempts to open my mail, or intercept my mail or read my mail, has committed a criminal offence. There are several problems with that analogy. You clearly own your letterbox, but do you own your Gmail inbox? It's on their server. There's a clear argument that you own the account, but the actual contents of the storage dedicated to that account? There's certainly no legal recourse if Google deletes your mail accidentally.

At what point has Google delivered your mail? When it's in your inbox? When it's been downloaded to your computer? What if they are scanning and indexing it before they move it to your inbox?

And unencrypted email is not like a sealed letter, it's like a postcard. This is important because privacy of correspondence laws in the US are derived from the 4th Amendment and are therefore restricted by the requirement for a "reasonable expectation of privacy". It's hard to argue that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when the sender sends the correspondence in plain text and with no prior knowledge of what systems it might pass through.

So when a gmail user sends me an email, google has invaded my privacy as the email receiver and if they attempt to send me a targeted add based upon the contents of my email, have they committed an offence and opened and read my mail with out my authorisation. It's doubtful that Google have committed any sort of offense, even if they have actual people reading your mail. Certainly Google would have a very strong defense if they can show that they are following the terms you agreed to when you created the account. Further, a ruling against allowing Google to scan email to target advertising would have far reaching consequences: it would effectively ban the use of spam and virus filters by ISPs as well. I suspect a court would be very unlikely to make such a ruling.

Re:What a crock

[ThirdPrize]

Can I recommend the following item for you as well. I hear it stops M$ and Google reading your thoughts as well.

Re:What a crock

[bytesex]

That is disingenious to say the least. You purposely mix up what's happening through either intent or technology in both systems. I'm no MS apologist, and I like Google very much, and I do realize there is a whole spectrum between 'parsing to make fit on screen' and 'passing onto the NSA', but MS' intent is to make the text be seen by you (which is nice, and has only my interest at heart), while Google's intent is also to use your text for other, commercial purposes (which clearly doesn't really have my interest at heart). To pretend that it's essentially the same thing is bad form, man. It doesn't add anything to the discussion.

Re:What a crock

[rtb61]

Here you go, http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/17/1536230, perhaps you can ask them for proof ;).

Re:What a crock

[jonnyj]

Be careful of typical knee-jerk Slashdot reactions that say Microsoft == Evil and Google == Good. There is a legitimate privacy point here. If I click on a context-sensitive advertisement that's based on the content of my emails, the advertiser now knows something about me that he didn't know before. That gives the advertiser the opportunity to treat me differently from other enquirers.

How long until advertisers discover that it's more profitable to withhold information about cheap or steeply discounted products from potential customers who've previously received emails from luxury car manufacturers, for example? I don't know if it's possible with the present generation of Google's technology, but is there anything ion the Gmail terms and conditions that prevent it?

Re:What a crock

[GPL Apostate]

no matter how much you'd like to dramatize it, a bot collecting statistics from your email (which you knowingly agreed to if your using gmail) is not a criminal offense.

And technically, it's not spyware, since spyware usually resides on the client's machine.

if google wants to collect data on my account and throw up targeted ads for me why should i give 2 shakes of a donkey's dick about it?

I dunno. Some of us do care. We do not approve of our communications being 'harvested' and used to direct targeted advertising (propaganda) against us.

The whole 'they came for the gypsies...' bromide could be rattled off here.

Re:What a crock

[GPL Apostate]

There is a big difference between something 'reading' your mail and equipment that processes it. Otherwise, it could be said that a typewriter 'reads' the writing of what somebody types on it. All those whirring mechanical gears must be getting smart.

The difference, and it is a big one, is that google is processing the text you transport through their mechanism to discern information to use against you. Yes, I view advertisers and advertising as primarily being targeted to be used against the consumer. It isn't uncommon for people to view advertising as intrusive and a bad thing. Even in this new world of google-worship.

It's kind of shocking, to be frank, how much some people lick the boots of the advertisers these days.

Re:What a crock

[atamido]

There is a big difference. And I can assure you that when I worked for Microsoft, in their MSN department, I used to personally read the email of quite a few strangers. It was all to try and fix different issues, but you have to read the from and to lines to find messages. And you can't help but see parts of the message when looking at the headers and such. Trust me, whatever you may think, other people's email just isn't that interesting.

Of course, when you can read a person's email, see personal information and order receipts, and read the email of most of their friends, you can learn quite a bit about a person. Enough to screw with their head in hilarious ways. Not that I ever would have done that, of course.

As an aside, there are a few things worth mentioning about their backend, at least when I used to work there. They store their email as a single plain text, like most sensible email servers. They don't break it down into objects like Exchange. They log the past 40 or so IP addresses that you logged into your account from. They track the date/time of every single time your password is changed. If you had MSN dialup or DSL, they authenticated against your email every time you connected, using RADIUS I believe. Most send/receive issues are not Hotmail's servers fault. Hotmail's spam filter is probably the worst in existence. MSN's Usenet servers would randomly (around 50%) reject correct passwords. We would tell people their clients were flakey, but it was in fact the authentication connection between the Usenet and Email servers that didn't quite work.

Re:What a crock

[smitth1276]

You're talking to a forum full of people who don't get that sort of nuance. Witness the outcry over similarly impersonal NSA datamining of international phone calls, and it's sudden rhetorical transformation to "spying". Watch, though.. those same hyperbolic partisan types will jump to defend Google using arguments that would work exactly as well for the NSA.

Re:What a crock

[LWATCDR]

Yep and frankly anyone that thinks Email is any more private than a postcard is an idiot.
Just a news flash but your email is sent across the internet as plain text! It is not secure in any way shape or form.
If you want email a private massage then you should encrypt it and send it as an attachment.
I don't care if it is hotmail, gmail, or outlook.

Re:What a crock

[slack_prad]

http://bp1.blogger.com/_SIhALImZRvI/RkUhs-L_SDI/AAAAAAAAAIU/R3lj8hQC5hU/s1600-h/gpr.PNG

Re:What a crock

[budgenator]

There does seem to be a philosophical disconnect there; the real question is can a machine read an email or listen to a phone call? Obviously the answer is no listening and reading are activities that only intelligent sentient beings can do. As long as google's algorithms sever out adds without human intervention or revelation to a third party, it's not an invasion of privacy, as long as no human listens to or reads the transcripts of the NSA wiretap no unreasonable search has happened.

Re:What a crock

[RedWizzard]

I think you missed the point ... What I was talking about was at which point the mail some else sends, their mail, becomes the mail you receive, your mail ie. the sender versus the recipient and whose email is being read. So as the receiver getting email into my private ISP provided account I have agreed to nothing with google nor can the sending by use gmail imply that I have. Google don't insert ads into outgoing emails. I assumed you were talking about receiving email with a Gmail account because those are the only emails Google scan (at least for targeted advertising).

Re:What a crock

[Dhalka226]

Watch, though.. those same hyperbolic partisan types will jump to defend Google using arguments that would work exactly as well for the NSA.

Even if you are right that the technical details or similar enough that the same defenses would apply to both sides (and I'm not conceding that, just not arguing it), it brings one simple thought to mind:

There is a difference between what a private company does and what the US government does. If you don't think that is so, check out that Constitution thing and the great length to which its authors went to describe and limit the powers of government. Then they went on to create that Bill of Rights majig that even though they had just mentioned what power Congress had, further went out to explicitly deny them the ability to do certain other things.

Besides which, I am not under any obligation to use Gmail if I disagree with their scanning my email to serve advertisements; there are dozens of companies that offer basically the same services. If I didn't like any of them, I could buy a domain and set up my own email services.

While I suppose technically speaking one isn't required to use AT&T, that's becoming less and less true in the US as they are allowed to reconstitute their monopoly. And it was done in secret. And they knew it was wrong and very possibly illegal to cooperate with the government in this manner, or they wouldn't suddenly by spending tens of thousands of dollars to lobby Congress to grant them immunity for it.

But really, the bottom line is this: Google can not kill me. Google can not take away my freedom. Nobody can force me to use Google, and they know only what I tell them in some way or another. The government can do all of this. They can, as we have seen, compel others to do the same--certainly with a warrant but in this case even without.

Stepping away from the particular example: If a person lives at home, their parents could read their mail. They could thumb through their drawers. They could read anything that was lying around. This isn't good, but the person may or may not care. Do you think the same level of disinterest would abound if some stranger came into the house to do exactly the same thing? Do you think students don't have different views on other students hearing them talk about things that maybe they shouldn't be talking about, versus teachers doing it?

The actor involved in a situation absolutely does matter even if the situations were otherwise technically identical.

And lest we forget, there are laws involved with what the NSA did. A federal court has struck the program down; while I wouldn't be surprised to see it reversed on appeal to what has become a conservative US Supreme Court, assuming they choose to hear the issue, that is currently the prevailing ruling in at least one federal district. It was struck down not only as an issue of privacy, but one of free speech, and separation of powers, and in violation of the requirements that were passed in the act that established the FISA court to begin with. In other words, it seems that what the NSA did was both illegal and unconstitutional.

(Incidentally, the NSA spying on US phone calls should turn any American's stomach. The NSA and CIA were always intended to be foreign intelligence gathering services, and were specifically enjoined from domestic spying. That was supposed to be done by the FBI according to established legal procedures, i.e. e.g. subpoenas and burdens of proof and evidence.)

Re:What a crock

[LWATCDR]

Only if the server, recipient, and, you are all on the same network. And nothing would stop the network admin from reading it.

Actually

[El Lobo]

Actually, I don't think they "read" the mail. Yes, they have some program that "scans" your mails and indexes it in some way, and then , it shows you the ads if they find some key words. Technically, they are scanning your mail, but a program cannot "read" (ie. process and "understand" the writing). So is it a violation of privacy? May be... this is a border line case.

Re:Actually

[Angostura]

Precisely. Unfortunately for Ballmer, if he had said 'analyse' or 'parse' it wouldn't sound nearly as sexy as 'read'.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

[Noryungi]

It's official... Google reads your email! Be afraid! Be VERY afraid! It must be true, because Steve Ballmer of Microsoft says so, and we all know how decent Steve is!

Ahem.

Excuse me, I got carried away here for just a second. :-)

By the way, if you don't want anyone to read your email, don't use gmail, hotmail or yahoo mail... But do use GPG and a local email client, other than Outlook... mmmmmkay?

Re:The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

[Mr_Mirsal]

Even if it wasn't a miserable FUD attempt, I would say 'so what ?'
E-mails are sent through the internet in fully readable plain text.
You don't want anyone to read your email ? Then encrypt it. Period.

so...

[cosmocain]

From TFA:

Microsoft and Google have been gearing up for a major war over software as a service and web-based applications, with Google offering Gmail and Google docs, and Microsoft offering Hotmail, Office and preparing for Windows Live Office.

it's just the last sentence and it contains every justification of mixing up the verbs "to read" and "to process". reading is something done by humans, not some word-sensitive processing for freaking advertisements. everyone a bit tech-savvy knows about googles somehow strange interpretation of privacy - so: if you don't like it, don't ******* use it.

I knew it

[jsse]

Ballmer says of Google, 'they read your mail and we don't.' Now I know why you don't respond to my comments and complains, you just simply don't read them at all.

Your honesty as a corporate leader shines us all.

Re:Okay, and?

[darthflo]

So... If this access is secret, how exactly do you know of it?

("Sometimes I wish the government would actually kill conspiracy theorists, even if it were just to prove them right")

The full quote...

[darthflo]

The video mentioned in TFS is, of course, a fake. The actual quote was this: Ballmer: [...] they read your mail and we don't, but our Developers, Developers, Developers are working on that! Developers, Developers, Developers...

After a few minutes of his "developers" chant, Ballmer was reported as throwing chairs at every googly seeming person in the room.

Re:Yeah!

[gbobeck]

I for one salute our new Google overlords!

Well, at least we know they will know where to search for us!

If Microsoft doesn't "read" your mail the same way

[lpontiac]

(ie pass it through software which matches up tokens against a database containing other tokens) .. then how do they filter out spam?

Gmail

[u235meltdown]

I have been using Gmail since 2004, and am glad to say I haven't deleted an email (other than spam) yet. It is understandable that there are privacy concerns with this type of archival of personal data. Personally, I think that the benefits outweigh the potential risks. I don't discuss anything too private over email or the internet for that matter because of the fact that it is less personal. The ease of having all my multiple personal, work, and school email addresses forward to one globally accessible inbox is just worth it to me.

They don't need to, they got your PC by the balls

[SmallFurryCreature]

Lets be honest here, this is MICROSOFT we are talking about here warning us that Google doesn't respect our privacy. Well they should know shouldn't they? The creators of the least secure OS ever made, the OS that updates itself when we don't want it too, that has a EULA that gives MS the right to snoop around on your system, read whatever it wants and alter whatever it wants and if it destroys anything, too bad. The OS that has been known to phone home until someone found out and then they disable it saying that they couldn't identify you from just your IP and credit card number and every other bit of personal information they could find.

Sure google reads your gmail, we know this. It is how it works, they are very clear about it and if you don't like it, don't use it. It is not like google has a monopoly or anything they have been found guilty of abusing on several continents, that forces you to use their services.

Sometimes I think MS needs to hire a person to increase their public relations. The task would not be complex. He just stands next to the microphone at MS press-release center, and whenever an MS employee walks up to it, he zaps them.

Or put more simple? MS if you want to improve your image, SHUT UP. Do NOT say a single thing for the next year and your image will go through the roof, because you just keep saying these insane things that everyone with a brain can see for the complete and utter lying bullshit it really is.

FUD only works when you got a shred of believability left. If Steve Ballmer proclaimed that the sky was blue, I would doubt that.

What next, Bush calling Blair a bit of thicky who lied to his voters about Iraq? Britney Spears calling the Spice Girls a bad act? Germany commenting on the US tendency to start wars?

Really, MS needs to hire a public relation officer who knows that less is more. The only thing Steve Ballmer should be allowed to say in a year is, Hi, these are the profit figures for last year. Thank you, goodbye.

I wonder if the shareholders can demand he keeps his mouth shut because he is damaging the value of the company.

Pot, meet Kettle

[waferhead]

Didn't Hotmail have some brouhaha awhile back where the fine detail of the EULA basically said they OWNED any email/IP that went through their service?

Maybe I'm just delusional again...

Re:Pot, meet Kettle

[incabulos]

They did. When the big controversy blew up they quietly changed the Hotmail EULA to exempt North American users from the "we own everything you see and do through hotmail" policy as it was blatantly illegal and was likely to provoke more anti-trust issues. As far as I know it _still_ applies to all other countries.. use Hotmail to develop software and Microsoft say they own the software you author or collaborate on.. heartwarming.

Re:Pot, meet Kettle

[incabulos]

"Surely you jest!" you say. And how I wish it were so:

http://www.aaxnet.com/news/M010512.html#rights

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/03/30/all_your_data_and_biz/

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/03/1535244

Every email provider reads your emails

[this great guy]

I would add that virtually every email service provide already reads your emails... how does Balmer think anti-spam technogologies work ? Duh ! (Notable exception: greylisting.)

Please quote completely

[Opportunist]

I hate people who quote out of context. At least be complete.

they read your mail and we don't ...have to because we know everything we want to know about you through the phoning home of our OS.

Ballmers Proof

[PinkyDead]

Pretty damning evidence:

From: sergey.brin@hotmail.com
To: eric.schmidt@msn.com
Re: Reading user's gmail

Eric,

Sounds like a great idea.

S.

BadAnalogyMan says...

[adnonsense]

This is like a ginormous soot-stained, pitted, dented and immobile pot which has been simmering for the last twenty-five years calling the nearby, newish and rapidly expanding kettle made from stainless steel which is now somewhat more rusty than it was in 1998, black.

BTW Google reads your slashdot comments too.

Speaks To CEOs strikes again

[simong]

Ballmer's job is to serve FUD to those who read Forbes Magazine for the articles, and he's done it again. He plants seeds of doubt in the minds of people who probably have their emails printed out for them, and can't tell the difference between Gmail, Hotmail or the corporate Lotus Notes system that's rapidly coming to the end of its life. The sysadmins will shortly recommend dumping Notes for a system based on Zimbra, but as the CEO goes to sign it off at a tenth of the price of an equivalent MS Exchange system, he notices in the high level description that it supports Gmail... wait, isn't that a bad thing? The proposal is rejected and the CEO's doubt sets in motion the installation of a shiny new Exchange system, and Microsoft take another scalp thanks to Speaks To CEOs' ramblings.

spam filters

[aivarsk]

Spam filters "read" your email so don't use them.

talking through his back.ORIFICE as usual ..

[rs232]

"When you register for certain Microsoft services, we will ask you to provide personal information. The information we collect may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies. We use cookies and other technologies to keep track of your interactions with our sites and services to offer a personalised experience" http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx

It gets better

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has openly fought against the US governments ability to read your email. That is they only allow the feds into read YOUR email IFF they have a warrent on you. MS AND yahoo actually allowed the feds in during W's illegal action. In addition, in China, both MS and Yahoo cooperate with the chinese gov. in giving up email. Google has cooperated with the Chinese gov, but nowhere near what MS and Yahoo do. Just like in America, they do not give chinese gov. carte Blanche ability to read the emails.

For the naysayers, here is simple proof. When the feds went after the search engines, where did it become public? Only the ones that fought against them. The ones that cooperated were kept quiet. And yes, ALL of the majors were expected to cooperate. Only Google fought it.

Sending mail in the clear is nutty

[Zigurd]

Back in the day when networks were all wired, and mail servers were all on the premises, and computers had 80286 CPUs, it might have made sense for mail to be sent and stored in cleartext. Nowadays, storing mail and documents that way, and sending them over unprotected WiFi access points, is a huge privacy and security hole. It's a bit shocking that not even open source mail clients and servers still, by default, don't secure payload with encryption.

As for Webmail, Web-based backup services could not even be sold without encrypting payload. How is it that lack of encryption is still acceptable in Webmail?

It;'s not ad hominem to question motives

[R2.0]

The thing is, hearing Microsoft criticising another company's business practices vis a vis privacy is singularly jarring. Remember, this is the company who just recently forced users of their software to install a patch, whether they said "No" or not. And then didn't want to tell those users about it.

It is perfectly acceptable to agree with concerns about a company's activities, but question the motives of those making the objections. It's like a murderer criticising a drug dealer - it seems the murderer is trying to make himself look better in comparison.

Steve:

[xrayspx]

It's not that we love Google reading our mail, it's that we just don't like you.

Sincerely,

The Internet

Does Hotmail do Spam Detection?

[zimage]

If Hotmail checks your incoming email for spam and viruses, then aren't they "reading" your mail just as Google does? Google has a computerized parser that looks at the context of your email and displays relevant ads. Hotmail has a computerized parser that looks at the context of your email and discards it if it's "bad". That seems like the same kind of reading to me.

Re:Don't use any for private e-mail

[brkello]

I don't understand why you don't understand. Webmail is easy to set up and there is never a question if your can get access to it. Any system connected to the Internet will have a browser and therefor you will have access to your mail. Some people don't want to (or know how) to have their own domain and run their own mail server.

So you read the terms and conditions and you are worried because your privacy rights could be violated. Do you send e-mail to anyone with these accounts? Do you encrypt your e-mail? Unless you send all your mail to other people running their own mail server and encrypt all your mail...then everything is moot. If you wrote terms and services to your own e-mail system it would say the same thing since you can't even guarantee your own privacy as soon as you click send.

These sites offer free space that they backup for all for just showing you a few ads. And not all of them sign you up for mailing lists.

Really, gmail is a win-win situation for the company and consumers. I can understand if some people would not want to use it. But I can't understand why someone would not be able to understand why everyone else does use it.