Friday, April 23, 2004
GMail
I was offered the opportunity to test out Google's new email service, GMail, while it is still in beta. Given the controversy surrounding their new offering, I thought I'd give it a whirl, just out of curiosity.
The main point of contention with GMail is that they scan your mails to work out what kinds of adverts to show you at the side of the screen. Showing advertisements in itself is not something we can object to - this is a free service, they give you 1GB (1000MB) of storage (which is 500times as much as Hotmail's standard 1MB) and they need to make money somehow, just like Hotmail, which also displays ads. But Hotmail doesn't read your email to do this.
Now, Google make it clear that no 'human' will ever read your email, and that the process is automated, and is performed only for the purposes of showing you relevant ads. Does this constitute a violation of privacy, if no other person sees my data? Well, I'm not sure what I think about this. I don't think I mind Google's machines scanning my mail, but if a machine can scan it, then it means my mail is potentially available for other machines to scan, and it will probably be easier for people to scan it too. And Sergey Brin, one of Google's founders, has refused to rule out the possibility of tying together GMail's email scanning with Google's search cookies, so that in the future ads could be targeted according to what I say in my emails and what I search on the web.
I'm all for a service that will help me out by tying these things together and suggesting links that will help me do what I'm trying to do, but GMail only does ads, not unbiased searching. This gets me thinking about the future of context aware computing, where devices are smart enough to realise what we're trying to do, and suggest options accordingly. I don't what that kind of help to be sponsored, I want it to be useful. The big players in the market are not necessarily the best providers, and this kind of thing might just exacerbate the problem of the minnows forced out by the big fish.
I don't think it's good that GMail hides the details of what they do with your emails in a service agreement several pages long that initially appears in a text box that only shows 5 lines at a time. Most people just click "Yes, I agree" to these things without reading them - I know I usually do. But this time I read the whole thing and found the details in there, but I think with the current furore GMail ought to make their operating policies even more clear. A section headed "Why we're different" in their welcome email doesn't even mention their ad-targeting mechanism.
In the end, it's up to the user to decide whether they accept the operating policies of a particular provider, but it's up to the provider to make sure the user knows exactly what they're signing up for, and I think in this case Google could make it clearer.
I was offered the opportunity to test out Google's new email service, GMail, while it is still in beta. Given the controversy surrounding their new offering, I thought I'd give it a whirl, just out of curiosity.
The main point of contention with GMail is that they scan your mails to work out what kinds of adverts to show you at the side of the screen. Showing advertisements in itself is not something we can object to - this is a free service, they give you 1GB (1000MB) of storage (which is 500times as much as Hotmail's standard 1MB) and they need to make money somehow, just like Hotmail, which also displays ads. But Hotmail doesn't read your email to do this.
Now, Google make it clear that no 'human' will ever read your email, and that the process is automated, and is performed only for the purposes of showing you relevant ads. Does this constitute a violation of privacy, if no other person sees my data? Well, I'm not sure what I think about this. I don't think I mind Google's machines scanning my mail, but if a machine can scan it, then it means my mail is potentially available for other machines to scan, and it will probably be easier for people to scan it too. And Sergey Brin, one of Google's founders, has refused to rule out the possibility of tying together GMail's email scanning with Google's search cookies, so that in the future ads could be targeted according to what I say in my emails and what I search on the web.
I'm all for a service that will help me out by tying these things together and suggesting links that will help me do what I'm trying to do, but GMail only does ads, not unbiased searching. This gets me thinking about the future of context aware computing, where devices are smart enough to realise what we're trying to do, and suggest options accordingly. I don't what that kind of help to be sponsored, I want it to be useful. The big players in the market are not necessarily the best providers, and this kind of thing might just exacerbate the problem of the minnows forced out by the big fish.
I don't think it's good that GMail hides the details of what they do with your emails in a service agreement several pages long that initially appears in a text box that only shows 5 lines at a time. Most people just click "Yes, I agree" to these things without reading them - I know I usually do. But this time I read the whole thing and found the details in there, but I think with the current furore GMail ought to make their operating policies even more clear. A section headed "Why we're different" in their welcome email doesn't even mention their ad-targeting mechanism.
In the end, it's up to the user to decide whether they accept the operating policies of a particular provider, but it's up to the provider to make sure the user knows exactly what they're signing up for, and I think in this case Google could make it clearer.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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