Forbes Reviews Google's Gmail [updated] 456
An anonymous reader submits "Forbes.com has what looks to be the first hands-on review of Google's forthcoming Gmail service. Aside from the 1-gigabyte storage, the searching features sound pretty useful for what the writer calls 'email packrats' which I think fits me pretty well. But I can't say I agree with the writer's opinion that privacy fears, as discussed this Slashdot thread, about the Gmail service are 'overblown.' Still and all, I'm curious to try it myself and see what I think." Update: 04/13 00:55 GMT by T : notEA writes "A California state senator is drafting legislation to block Google from releasing Gmail. Seems kind of silly, since all anti-spam filters read your messages anyway."
It isn't forced on us.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the uproar... if you're against having them sort your mail and deliver ads based on content, don't sign up!
In Google We Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Google insists quite clearly in its privacy policy that "No human reads your mail to target ads or other information without your consent." The process by which it pushes ads at its users is fully automated. Fears about privacy problems inherent with the Gmail service are, in our opinion, overblown.
All of the privacy fears surounding Gmail are based on Google breaching their own privacy policy, which would be an unethical violation of trust. But, since e-mail is unencrypted, every e-mail provider on the face of the Earth has the same ability to breach that trust, including MSN Hotmail, Yahoo, Earthlink, and whoever/whatever you trust your e-mail to.
So, when it comes down to it, the bottom line question is, do you trust Google to do what they say they're going to do? If you don't... just who are you going to trust to handle your e-mail?
If your tin foil hat is firmly on, you can't use e-mail at all. Most people will just not e-mail you rather than jump through security certificate hoops. That means their ISP's SMTP server could be logging everything that's sent from them to you, and you'd be powerless to stop that.
Re:Google Backups! (Score:4, Insightful)
Privacy Concerns? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google Backups! (Score:5, Insightful)
The potential abuse schemes are so many in number that there's no way Google is going to release Gmail into the wild without having defenses in place. To do so would be the ultimate blunder in Web service history, it's just not like Google to do something like that.
Remember, the system right now is in a much talked about yet still closed beta state right now. How they're going to even hand out accounts remains yet to be seen.
Just because they allow 1 GB of historic e-mail storage doesn't mean they can't throtle users to 1 MB per day and make them take over 3 years to get up to that GB... there's so many simple fixes on the table that Google's gonna grab a few of them.
no humans... (Score:5, Insightful)
No human reads your mail to target ads or other information without your consent
What about programs that target ads to you based on your email or ``other'' information? The way the article is worded infers that this is happening. What is to prevent google from coming up with human-readable statistics of what email messages a person or group of people are receiving or sending?
Re:Google Backups! (Score:4, Insightful)
Privacy? Who cares? (Score:1, Insightful)
I may be an exception, but I use my web e-mail addresses as backups for my more secure accounts. Google, then, will just be another backup...one with a lot of storage. :)
I know I can't be the only one that thinks this way...can I?
Re:Fucking danger (Score:4, Insightful)
Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case with other email providers - especially ones that outsourced support to other countries.
Well done. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now this is exactly the kind of simple-but-fantastically-useful thinking that makes me love google. I can only hope that Apple `borrows' the idea for mail.app
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
Is webmail a good choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond that, I want my e-mail archives on my computer, not on some random server that I don't control. I want to know that I'm the only person who is accessing my files, and I don't want to wake up some morning and find out that the message that I desperately need to review is lost because of a server failure or DDOS attack.
Relying on a webmail system for your primary communications just seems foolish.
Re:Google Backups! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just do a search on Google and see how for any vaguely x-rated term, a whole host of fake listings appear.
If they haven't solved this in the six+ months this has been happening, I wouldn't give them full credence for their ability to stop warez action.
Privacy concerns? (Score:5, Insightful)
You must explicitly request Google by name to use their services. You can't be unaware of their existence like you can with Microsoft or Apple (comes with the computer).
Google does not surreptitiously install spyware on your system and record everything you do on your computer, requiring you to meticulously hunt down and remove its components or employ third party scumware removal utilities.
All you have to do stop using Google is to stop typing their name.
Switching to Google did not require a 15MB download, or a registration process, or a credit card. As the average joe, you've invested very little in Google, and you can replace them as simply as you can type a 4-8 letter word.
The only thing that keeps you typing their name is that you believe they're the best way to find the answer. Once you stop believing that, once a significant group of people become fed up, Google is finished. They know this, you should too.
In fact, type "search engine" and Google will tell you about altavista, lycos, excite, alltheweb, etc.
Re:Privacy? Who cares? (Score:1, Insightful)
Privacy Policy (Score:5, Insightful)
So google will scan to add ads to my email. This info wasn't buried on page 200 in small legalese, but was in their FAQ! Google has been very forthcoming with how they will scan and store individuals email. Given that they are upfront about this, some of the privacy groups seem to literally have gone off the wall.
People say, ads are obnoxious in my email. Clearly you havn't used hotmail recently. They are in the frame and in the email! Google invented the unobtrusive ad.
Compared to the hotmail and yahoo accounts people will be coming from (have you read your SBC/Yahoo terms of service recently), it is hard to see how google will be so much worse for them, even from a privacy standpoint.
While the airlines are giving my flight info to private contractors to profile me so that I can't travel anymore, without telling me, google posts how they will scan my email to advertise products to me.
Other privacy features? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the privacy areas that would be more valuable to me are:
- Ability to access securely. I am much more concerned about sniffers on public networks grabbing my data than google's software seeing it. Can I use a fully SSL encrypted session for mail access (rather than Yahoo's SSL authentication, then clear viewing of mail content)?
- Encrypted e-mail support? Open standards based e-mail encryption would be a major plus. If it was compatible with Mozilla/Thunderbird it would be extremely useful. Running a huge mail service that supported this could get enough momentum for average people to actually secure their e-mail. (The mail is then secured not only in transit, but also on the disk.)
- IMAPS / POPS support? I don't know if it will allow POP/IMAP support at all. But, if it does, SSL encrypted sessions are a must to avoid password and data sniffing.
Re:It isn't forced on us.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is the point of the service for them anyway
Re:Google Backups! (Score:5, Insightful)
Good for mailing lists / Usenet (Score:2, Insightful)
That sort of mail is generally public anyway, so the privacy issues would be negligible.
Re:1GB free e-mail already available (Score:4, Insightful)
Your mail is sitting in plain text on their servers. The privacy issue -- will (Spymac|Google) violate its privacy policy and read your email -- is the same whichever you use.
And, (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event, as long as people are sending clear text email across the net, it's all being read and stored by _somebody_.
Re:Google Backups! (Score:3, Insightful)
For wares? Not sure how smart warez people are to begin with, since trading warez in any medium is illegal in most places anyhow
That being said, the use of encryption, public computers, anonymous remailers, and the fact that someone would have to report you doing it since not even an army of people can keep track of all the messages.
Gmail will have warez the same way warez, and various pornography, was traded in the open on IRC, on yahoo groups, on the web, on P2P etc. etc. etc.
Re:Gmail should be really for free? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It isn't forced on us.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ill trust it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at Hotmail... in hotmail, If your mother or your wife is using hotmail, despite the content of the email, or her profile, she is bombarded with ads for singles sites, personals sites, and the occasional porn site... and that's being shown to your 16 year old kid too.
These ads are made to look like polls and chat boxes or survey forms to specifically increase click through....
but google, though it may parse your email, will display a relevant ad based upon the content of the email. This means your mother will be shown recipe sites... your daughter will be pointed to the Gap, and when you wife mentions Valentines or Mothers day to you, you will be able to instantly click through to redenvelope.com...
Possibly, it could be a life saver.
and honestly, if I never had to sort or search for an email again, Id be happy.
Of course it's unique! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:1GB email isn't that unique (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that guaranteed.... like say early cable modem providers "guaranteed"?
I'm sure if all of their customers actually used 10GB they wouldn't think it's so cheap. Say they use 200GB disks [309$ CDN locally...] they would have to have 19 customers for 2 months to pay it off.
Doesn't sound like much, but what if they need say 10 drives to accomodate their customers? Chances are that's at least two computers [I dunno how that translates into U/2U] which means more money, etc... I found a 1U co-locate for 150$/mo. Assuming two 2U spots costs say 500$ you need at least 50 customers each month to turn bank (they will also consume 3 200GB disks...). Presumably you will want to give them say 10GB traffic too. Well that's another 5$ per user or 250$...
So right now you're upto ~750$ per month. But you're only making 500$ a month... so you cheap on the disks cuz they won't fill it up. And you cheap on the bandwidth budget cuz they won't fill it up....
Then when they do you accidentally exercise the "I'm bigger than you clause" where you say "unlimited meant reasonably unlimited and reasonably means you are owned."
Tom
Re:Privacy concerns? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem is that I wonder how much of this will change after their IPO.
Right now they are a private company trying to build up. What happens after they issue stock and have report their earnings quarterly? Will they stick to their principles?
Re:thirteen thirty-seven. (Score:2, Insightful)
1 gig isn't crap. Then what, make multiple accounts to store files? Yeah, that is really fucking practical when broadband and hard drives are cheap as hell.
Further more, what about asshats like you causing file size restrictions? 10mb attachments aren't going to be very fun for warez if the scene typically follows 15mb files. Even then, why waste time using Googles space where they can monitor transfering of files and restrict you?
There are about 100 of you people on
Re:Name Grabbing-rush (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gmail should be really for free? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the power users are those who will subscribe to lists that they want to use for reference, but do not actually read on a regular basis. And guess what Google will do with such a list message? They will likely store one copy on the server, and a pointer from every account which received that message - perhaps with a small diff file to recover address differences, etc.
In the end, hard drive space is cheap They can set up a fully backed up terabyte array for under $1000. That terabyte array will support thousands of 'average' users, and hundreds of 'power' users.
The biggest deal is the searching technology. To search all that they'll need several dedicated servers with their own indexes. Chances are email will be auto-indexed as it comes in so searches always seem fresh.
In the end it's not going to need even a few percent of your excessive estimate. But if it did, you know it'd be worth it since they'd have extremely exacting profiles on their users and the people they contact, and advertising that is so tightly focused can be nothing but profitable.
The concept of indexing each email as it's stored provides a powerful opportunity for spam filtering, compression, and copy storage. If two messages are 90% similar then they may be from a list, they may be spam, or they may be valid. Create a diff file, store the diffs on each account, store the 'main' message the diffs were created from, and file the messages into the spam holder or regular folding, tagging and indexing as you go.
The fact is that the more users they have, the more powerful this system becomes. I'm drooling just thinking about the possibilities... I wouldn't mind working for them, I think.
Of course, this is mad speculation, but it just makes sense givin that they are an indexing company. Their main product is not searching, but indexing. Searching is simply a by-product.
-Adam
Re:To shut up all the people talking about warez (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google Backups! (Score:3, Insightful)
If your search and index process are fast enough you can save significant amount of space.
Have you guys seen Orkut... (Score:3, Insightful)
Privacy fears aren't "overblown"; just look at all the information they try to collect when you fill in the forms for Orkut, by far the most extensive and penetrating data-collection i have seen on the web. They sure are trying to build a massive database of comprehensive personal information about their users. Now add to that your emails and your search/surfing habits and the picture is complete.
Re:In Google We Trust (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I do not. Why?
1. Google can probably alter the deal at any time without your consent.
2. Once a company goes public, they are no longer trustworthy in my opinion. We need look no further then SCO to see what can happen once a company becomes publically traded (Caldera).
Sadly, what is ethical and what is legal are often two different things.
Gmail v. Mmail; An examination of slashdot bias (Score:3, Insightful)
If this were Microsoft's brilliant idea, say Mmail, you'd be all over it like flies at a honey maker convention. So where are the flies?
Re:It isn't forced on us.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It isn't forced on us.... (Score:3, Insightful)
My personal account would probably account for about that much.
My business account would easily use a gigabyte. Too many of the people I work with do not hesitate to send email with a 3-megabyte attachment.
I've tried, and failed to get them to just zip the attachment first (Winzip even has a beta plug-in for Outlook that does it automatically). Even though we have an web server to easily upload/download data, they can't be bothered with it.
At the price... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google Backups! (Score:5, Insightful)
Two easy ways to avoid this:
1.) Only allow attachments up to say 2 megs.
2.) Disallow accounts from being accessed by more than 10 ip addresses in a 24 hour period.
If you want to search, but don't want a "Hotmail" (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, how many corporates are going to abandon Outlook and go in through a webmail interface instead? For that matter, how many non-corporates are going to abandon Eudora ?
Webmail interfaces are fine for remote accessing your email, but nobody in their right mind uses them for infrastructural purposes. If you want decent search in your existing email client, then use ISYS email [isysemail.com] and keep using the mail client you want to.
Re:Google Backups! (Score:3, Insightful)
OH COME ON!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead use PGP or some open variant.
Sending ANY e-mail via plaintext is almost like using "family-channel" walkie talkies. Anybody (within an area/network) could be listening.
Re:1GB email isn't that unique (Score:4, Insightful)
Privacy is not my main concern with Gmail (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have concerns about Google scanning your email to place unobstrusive, sometimes-actually-useful text advertisements next to your email, then there is a solution. DON'T FLIPPING USE IT! That's all there is too it!
The thing that I'M concerned about is if they pull a similar move that Apple did with mac.com accounts. "Oh yah they'll be free forever", then two years later, once everyone is hooked on free @mac.com email addresses, they turn around and say they're going to charge $99 dollars per year. Excuse me? I dont think so. My mac.com email was my main email for nearly two years and as soon as they pulled that shit, I cancelled my account, bought my own domain, and now have free email for life. Apple was hoping that users would pay because they had been using that email address as their main email and wouldnt want to switch. Well it didnt work on me and yo should have read the mac message boards when this happened. People were pissed!
I do think Gmail is a cool idea. Being able to store a gig of email so you (as an average user anyways) never have to delete email and have the best search engine in the world to search through old emails is awesome. But what if their idea is to get you hooked so you wont ever want to give it up, then start charging a fee for it? Even though it is worth probably $100/year, I would tell them to shove their bill up their ass and move on. This is why I won't use Gmail.
Gmail is not a requirement! (Score:5, Insightful)
All spam filters "read" your email. AOL, Hotmail, anything with SpamAssasin, any service with spam protection needs to "read" messages to analyze them.
Oh, and about this:
..."residual copies of email may remain on our systems for some time"...
They use computers with hard drives! They can't guarantee that data is completely shredded. I'm sure they're not performing a secure wipe of every sector containing portions of an email once it's deleted.
If you started looking, most of the privacy "concerns" with Google's service apply to almost any email service. It's a huge fuss over nothing.
Re:It isn't forced on us.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, in fact MS has less incentive than Google (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this so hard?
A true email packrat would have more than 1GB... (Score:2, Insightful)
Gnus (circa April 2002); everything from before that is still stored in
Pegasus Mail on my Windows partition, except for the stuff from when I was
in college, which is stored as plain text (but with full headers) on my old
FAT16 data partition.
Okay, so most of that is mailing lists and spam, but still... one mere
gigabyte is nowhere near enough for a whole lifetime. If they were promising
to double the storage limit every eighteen months, then it might be closer to
enough (especially if you delete all the spam, instead of keeping it around
for statistical analysis like I do).
The Californian lawmaker feels that it's wrong... (Score:1, Insightful)
Funny, I thought that was my television.
It even has the temerity to customize the ads it delivers based on the shows I watch!
email is most convenient though (Score:4, Insightful)
"Like a massive billboard in my home?!" (Score:3, Insightful)
You've GOT to be kidding me.Please drop Liz Figueroa a message [ca.gov] and tell her to be sure to include Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo and a handful of other web and software-based e-mail services that already advertise to you whether your searching within your email or not...
Oh, and while she's at it, she should include legislation that abolishes the advertising on the cable tv that I'M PAYING FOR and the telemarketers that keep calling on the phone line that I'M PAYING FOR, because those sure are...
Re:gmail discriminates against the blind (Score:3, Insightful)
Spare me the whines about JS being a tool to invade privacy - a properly configured proxy and/or firewall provides appropriate protection.
I agree that JS is overused in some places, but in many large-scale "web applications", it's the only realistic way to provide the functionality expected in something like a web email service.
So get off your outdated 1998 soapbox. Stop trying to make your bones as a "guru" by aping Jakob Neilsen's neo-Luddite less-is-more mantras. JavaScript is not evil, and it's here to stay. Sorry if that breaks your heart.
You may resume using 'mail' to read your email and leave Gmail for everyone else.
-sharv