Gmail Commentary and Responses

Phil Windley writes "In his inimitable style, Tim O'Reilly tells us why GMail matters. The piece is entitled, 'The Fuss About GMail' but that doesn't begin to properly identify the real meat of what Tim's saying. Tim does discuss some of the privacy concerns on GMail and why he's not concerned, but he also breaks new ground on why GMail is not just another free email system. For example, Tim talks about how GMail might herald an era of large centralized computing and calls for APIs to allow GMail content to be move back and forth between it and other systems." Reader chris mansley writes "Google is quietly responding all the flak being given to their new email service. They have added a statement to quell the growing list of concerns. No more keeping email forever is at the top of the list. The reviews have been sparse on details and screenshots, but now Google is providing a sneak peek here and here." The only thing I didn't like about Gmail was their apparent intention to keep your mail forever, regardless of your wishes. Since they've now clarified that they don't plan to do that, it doesn't seem like there's much of a problem any more. Yahoo and MSN already link your searches on their respective engines with your account profiles on their respective free email services, and no one seems to care (maybe because no one uses MSN or Yahoo as a search engine these days, but still).

We trust Google.... don't we.

If you've got a trust-nobody mentality then what Google has to say means nothing, they're going to rip up their privacy policy and send every e-mail that goes through their system directly to John Ashcroft using their PageRank sorting technology to indicate which e-mails are most relavant to his desire to repeal every amendment in numbered order...

Of course, if you're sane, you trust Google because if they really wanted to screw the world over, they simply could decide that since their search engine is so good, everybody needs to pay $25 a month to keep accessing it... or decide to start logging all search queries to a user-specific cookie... or just take their bat and ball and go home. They've already got enough power to mess with us even worse than Gmail could be, and they've yet to be caught abusing any of that power or going back on their word.

That's how trust is really built... by letting them have the ability to screw up and seeing that they don't manage to do so. I'd certainly trust my e-mail with Google more so than I'd trust some of the other major "free e-mail" services out there.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

or decide to start logging all search queries to a user-specific cookie...

Erm. Hate to break this to you, but they kinda already do. Your google cookie has a unique user ID... I love Google, well, probably MORE than the next guy, but this *is* something they do.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

And my cookies expire at the end of each session :]

*shrug*

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

Unless you manually clean them (Or have your browser set to automatically clean them), the cookie actually expires on Jan. 17, 2038.

There's a tin-foil type site called Google Watch [google-watch.org] with a bunch of information about Google.

As I said in the grand-parent, I'm a larger-than-average fan of Google, so I believe most of the claims on the site are a bunch of paranoid rantings, but they do raise legitimate points about possibilities.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

This is a web site that claims the cookie expires in 2038 because of pending 'brain implants.' [google-watch.org]

Surely it couldn't be because they're using a large number of 32-bit UNIX-like systems, and that there's the UNIX [gsp.com] epoch [wikipedia.org] in all UNIX-like OSes on 32-bit systems is 2038.

I mean, that'd just be kha-raaaaaaazie!1! It's obvious that they set the cookie to 2036 so they could steal our Precious Bodily Fluids. Where's the tin foil? Where?

Err. Yah. Yah, at that point I think it's safe to say anything on the site can be honestly diregarded as bunk. Or at best poorly writen SciFi. Either way, it's relationship with reality is on the rocks, and reality is already calling it's mother and a divorce laywer.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

Your google cookie has a unique user ID

.. Which is part of the nature of cookies. Google uses cookies for location/language information, and perhaps ads as they relate to whatever language/country you're in. It's all in their privacy policy: http://www.google.com/privacy.html [slashdot.org]

Of course, you did not literally spread FUD -- just information, but I believe that now, while Google is inexplicably under attack - perhaps by those who could know better - we need to actively defend Google as the epitome of what companies on the internet can be.

If you read the link from the story and understand it, you'll know that you have nothing to worry about: Google's software is parsing your messages as you open them for keywords so they can show you ads. This is something their search engine does already, and, as far as I know, nobody has been traced and arrested via their cookie because they looked up "nude kids" or "dirty bomb diagrams." And if you're really paranoid, just turn off cookies: they aren't mandated. Every site that uses cookies gives you a "unique user id." If you want to whinge about "unique user IDs," we can talk about social security numbers or palladium hardware IDs or the Passport service.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

I (often) half-jokingly describe Google as the compendium of all the world's knowledge. But I wonder how long that would continue if they actually did anything evil?

There are a lot of search engines out there, and while Google is currently at the top of the list, nobody stays there forever. I can remember a time when Netscape was on top [I hear jwz in my head: shut up! :-)] For awhile it was Yahoo! and Altavista had a turn. Now it's Google.

I'm just a lowly coder. I'm not enough of a visionary to know who will be on top in a year. I hope it's Google, but I'm entirely prepared for it to be Amazon [a9.com] or Altavista [altavista.com] (again; has anybody noticed their recent changes?) or some brilliant kids from some community college somewhere who have nothing but a hosting account and some algorithms that will change the world.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

I trust Google as it stands today, but after the IPO I will trust them as far as I can throw a server farm. Any public company has a fudicial responsibility to their investors, and if times get tough or the shareholders scream enough then it is often difficult for even a well meaning management team to keep the customers interest in focus. That's why I'm not so hot on a Google IPO, they do well as a private company and I trust them a lot more that way. Why would they need an IPO anyways, they have all the money they need to implement any new ideas and none of the founders has said they are itching to cash out (and even if they are the remaining partners could leverage the corporate profits to buy out their share)

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

Smart investors know that consumer trust is one of those things that fall into the category of "goodwill"... that magical dollar value that represents the difference between the sum of all of the company's worldly goods and the combined worth of all of the issued shares.

In short, if Google betrays the trust customers have in it and therefore is no longer trusted, the company won't be worth as much.

Does SCO have any goodwill left? Doesn't look like it, and that's part of the reason major investor seems to be trying to cash out chips...

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

We had a guest the other night (I'm taking a high-tech entrepreneurship and venture initiation class this quarter), who basically said that after they sold part of the company (in the form of a venture stake for about 15%, and another further 15% to the employees in the form of stock and stock option grants), he suddenly had the fiduciary duty to maximize return to his shareholders. Even though they were not the majority (he and the other founder held 70%), as a member of the board and a corporate officer, he was legally obligated to consider actions that he, as a founder, didn't think were good in the long term.

One example. Google sells 30% of the company. Some guy (Bill Gates for example) comes along and offers 6 times the current share price for Google stock in an acquisition deal. For that kind of return for their shareholders, Google's board cannot ignore the offer and tell Bill to go away. Google's majority owners may end up not voting to sell, but their time, the time of the board, corporate officers, etc. would be eaten up having to deal with this.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

It's not about whether I trust Google's intentions. So long as Google is an American company, or more precisely so long as its headquarters exist in *any* country, there's a danger that the government of said country can bully them into giving up all the information they have on anybody.

Look at the Millenium copyright laws: Google takes down copyrignted content as soon as someone sends them an email telling them it infringes. They have to, it's the law. The Church of Scientology uses those provisions frequently.

Do you trust Google to treat your confidential data more seriously than their own survival? Why should you? Ashcroft or the FBI can ask google to hand over any ("terrorism related") information they like, and Google has to comply. It *has* to comply, whether they want to or not.

That's why Google can't be trusted with my personal information. Not because Google could turn out to be bad guys later, but because to be law abiding, they have to give up my data if asked. At least if I keep my data on my own servers, it's harder to access.

Remember, Google is *the* search king. They can't turn to the FBI and tell them "look, you can't do searches across all email account holders' archives, because it's too technically difficult". Instead, the FBI will say "do a search for "bin laden" across all your email archives, and give us the owner's addresses. And they'll comply, not because Google are the bad guys, but because Google are the *good* guys.

No thanks.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

It's not about whether I trust Google's intentions. So long as Google is an American company, or more precisely so long as its headquarters exist in *any* country, there's a danger that the government of said country can bully them into giving up all the information they have on anybody.

I haven't had mod points since December (despite two years and 1204 comments).

But if I did have mod points, mine would go to the parent.

So should yours.

Putting all your eggs in one basket, as the cliche notes, is bad policy.

Putting all your information in the hands of one company invites extensive profiling of you.

It may even be that Google respects your privacy;
it may even be that GW Bush is voted out of office and Ashcroft (slighty NSFW) with him, and contrary to any realistic possibility, the Democratic Party gets rid of [pmbrowser.info] Howard Berman [digitalspeech.org] is defeated in the Democratic Primary and Fritz Hollings [yale.edu] retires and the DMCA is repealed and no future Herbert Hoover ever leads the FBI into another COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org];
and it may even be that lions lie down with lambs and meat packers lie down with cows.

But even in such a perfect world, it would take one disgruntled Google employee or one corporate spy or one hacker to make all your data public.

The question isn't "is Google trustworthy"; the question is, given that you backup your data for the day your hard drive inevitably dies, given that you use an UPS because you know that even the best power company has blackouts, why you rush to put all your data in any one set of hands?

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

Do you trust Google to treat your confidential data more seriously than their own survival? Why should you? Ashcroft or the FBI can ask google to hand over any ("terrorism related") information they like, and Google has to comply. It *has* to comply, whether they want to or not.

If you don't trust Google to break the law, then presumably you don't trust any company. This is an argument that's based on the foundation of all email services abiding by US law, not one specific to Gmail. I'm not entirely sure you realize this.

Re:We trust Google.... don't we.

It's not about whether I trust Google's intentions. So long as Google is an American company, or more precisely so long as its headquarters exist in *any* country, there's a danger that the government of said country can bully them into giving up all the information they have on anybody.

This is very true. Fortunately google is currently working [google.com] to address these concerns.

Trust Nobody?

"If you've got a trust-nobody mentality..."

Then what the hell are you doing signing up to use a Free email service, or for that matter being on the internet to begin with?

If you do not trust google, then you really shouldn't trust hotmail or yahoo either.

Don't care about privacy

Since that 1GB will quickly be filled with spam and nothing else. Let them search and index THAT!

Spam Ideas - An Interesting Look at GMAIL?

Which is a good point, right?

Google right now faces a huge issue: "spam" websites designed to bomb it's search engine.

The one common thing about all spam emails is that they have a link to a product page [unless they're *scam* emails, a completely different thing]. Google can use algorithms on mail that gets marked and checked as spam to nerf the page rankings of those webpages.

Why is this important? Because it gives people a free service, gives google advertising money, and has a huge benefit to the search engine.

The best filtering "algorithm" is 5 million users doing your filtering for you. Google doesn't have that right now, because they don't ask anyone to rate their web results. Google stands to gain a huge statistical advantage by incorportating email into their services.

Re:Spam Ideas - An Interesting Look at GMAIL?

And how quickly after they did this would spammers use it to trash people's pagerank?

Have a gripe with Slashdot? Spam a few billion Gmail users with a link to slashdot, and wham. Instant PageRank death.

Re:Spam Ideas - An Interesting Look at GMAIL?

You are assuming that google is so stupid they would be unable to determine what is a joe job and what is a legitimate link.

You assume that Google has psychics working for them. A Joe Job and true spam are indistinguishable from one another. A Joe Job consists of spam that is sent out just like all other spam, the only difference is the target of the links.

For example, Bill has a website www.BuyBillsWidgets.com and he's doing fairly well.

Jack has a website that sells a similar widget www.BuyJacksWidgets.com and he isn't doing quite as well as Bill.

Jack enlists a spammer to send out 500k emails that link to www.BuyBillsWidgets.com. Google has no way of knowing who commissioned the sending of the spam. With your system Bill will be punished by the downranking of his page because Jack Joe Jobbed him.

Not even Google has the ability to determine the purpose of spam.

I guess maybe you need to learn what a Joe Job [wikipedia.org] is.

LK

Why the big fuss?

If you don't like Google's terms/serving ads based on your email... don't use Gmail! It's really that simple, no need for extra laws. Let the free market decide.

Hurrah for innovation

I think that the furore surrounding Gmail is really missing the point. As summed up in this excellent article [topix.net] the real target of Google seems to be the creation of a web-based operating system and the gradual erosion of Microsoft's position as the dominant OS manufacturer.

Given that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to market an email system with huge storage and new features, I'd love to see people focus more on this, and on where Google is going to go next.

two words:

(maybe because no one uses MSN or Yahoo as a search engine these days, but still)

Yahoo Groups

You'd be surprised how many people use it

slashdot keeps every post you make

Isn't this true? What is the difference?

I like this approach, it makes you think about what you say. Maybe some emails shouldn't be sent. If you have to worry about it, you shouldn't do it.

Google Server Farms

Given the Google server farms with over 100,000 computers world wide, it would not surprise me that data would linger on systems.

heck they plan on hardware failure, and if a box drops dead, they do not even pull it out of the line up until sometime the following week.

Re:Google Server Farms

Yeah, they send out this guy [mwscomp.com].

They're just being honest...

I think they've clarified they privacy policy to a level that us geeks should easily be able to understand...

When you hit "delete", more often than not in computer land, your data is not immediately rendered unrecoverable. In most operating systems, deleted files are ushered over to a "holding bin" for a final clear-out command to really get rid of them in case we want to change our mind. Once the OS finally lets go of the file, the file system often takes the short cut of just removing the index pointers to the file and/or marking the space as "unused", but leaving the data still spinning on the drive until something eventually wants to use that space... let's face it, a "quick format" doesn't have time to hit every track on the drive, it's taking a shortcut and that's what makes it "quick".

So, really, they're just saying that in order to make their magical mega-system work, "delete" isn't going to mean "Expunge it all right away!" but simply "Put in the pile that'll be discarded the next time the garbage collection process comes by." Therefore, they'll need to keep your "deleted" e-mails for an undisclosed length of time... they don't intend on keeping it forever, although they have to word the privacy policy in a way that might be misread that way because to do less just wouldn't be being honest.

If you don't have root access to the e-mail system where you work, you don't really know if "delete really means delete" on that system either. Your boss may in fact have access to your e-mail... you might as well assume that they do unless you know otherwise.

An API to link gmail with Thunderbird/Moz/Outlook

Would be a killer feature. If they could sync my PDA with my Desktop with Thunderbird I'd be thoroughly impressed.

Y! has this functionality for Outlook only; and it's seriously flawed (tasks get truncated at like 20 characters or something - ugh!).

Google certainly has what it takes to pull this off right. Hopefully, they'll provide a way for developers to integrate with the gmail API with external apps (ala T-bird, etc).

You can bet your last dollar that MSNmail, etc will (or already do; I don't use MSN) offer Syncronzation with their desktop apps.

Google: Gentlemanly Like Business Practices

I'm really impressed with how Google has handled themselves since their inception. They have certainly been innovative, but most importantly they employ things that aren't seen enough in today's business world: openness and integrity.

I'm inherently paranoid (or, perhaps more appropriately, private) and always take things with a grain of salt - especially when it's coming from a business the size of Google.

That said, I don't blame Google for their desire to recoup costs by generating targeting advertisement. I'm very much impressed with how open they have been about the procedures they will use to actually target the ads. With this recent letter that so quickly and openly answers concerns made public recently, I'm happy to say here is a company that has been widly successful - all while being true gentlemen.

Gmail

A good review can be found at http://jogin.com/weblog/archives/2004/04/15/juice

Gmail will be a success!

Their will be only a small few that won't try Gmail due to their fear of misuse or privacy concerns. Google has become a household name for people that use computers and even to those that barely ever touch a computer. I really don't see a need to currently extend or create new laws as the terms of service are clearly laid out and it is an optional free service. Gmail is destined for success already as there has been a large amount of media coverage and many people are not worried about the privacy issues. From the screenshots and some reviews currently out the interface seems to be very nice and the search features sound great. I will be definitely getting an account to at least try it, the 1 GB of space definitely is a plus too.

Here are a few reviews that I was reading :

• Review 1 [miscoranda.com]
• Review 2 [wholelottanothing.org]

What if it IS just email?

What if it's just 100GB email and nothing more, nothing less? Google wants customer loyalty; that's a good enough reason to do this. Their IPO is coming soon, everyone's watching the company. But what if Microsoft's search engine is actually good? What if Microsoft's search engine comes bundled with all future versions of windows, and windows updates (and believe me, it will). What if Microsoft sets your default home page to its own search engine EVERY TIME you update?

At least with an e-mail service, Google will be standing on two feet when this happens. People will want to check their GMail no matter what search they are using. Google isn't even close to the financial power of Microsoft right now, so it needs to prepare for the attack...

Workaround for gmail and privacy.

1. use a browser/email plugin that can automatically encrypt your email before sending it.
2. use a browser/email decrypter plugin to unencrypt your mail when you read it.

PGP as a form of encryption is commonly available. Theoritically possible but I am not sure how practical it is.

This way all the webmail programs do not know what is being transmitted/stored.

How about other applications that can use the 1GB of storage from gmail?

e.g. online filesystem - files stored as attachments to emails to yourself.

What else?

Re:Well it's evident...

Gmail doesn't block attachments other than executables (like the 30 .pif viruses you get every day).

Non-executables (zip, jpg, doc, html, gif, pdf, etc.) are accepted just fine, and the per-message limit is 10 megs.

biggest problem with gmail: governmental request

I have an early gmail account, and have used it a little.

The most serious concern is the privacy policy itself.

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/privacy.html

Specifically:
As a standard email protocol, when you send an email from your Gmail account, Gmail includes your email address and user name in the header of the email. Beyond this, we do not disclose your personally identifying information to third parties unless we believe we are required to do so by law or have a good faith belief that such access, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, (b) enforce the Gmail Terms of Use, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues (including, without limitation, the filtering of spam), (d) respond to user support requests, or (e) protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users and the public.

"governmental request" means pretty much they'll turn over any information withouut a subpoena. I suppose for a free service, you get what you pay for.

Re:biggest problem with gmail: governmental reques

Holy shit, how is this moderated as Insightful? It's totally wrong.

They're listing situaitons [sic] in which they won't reveal information

In fact, they are listing the situations under which they will reveal information.

[W]e do not disclose your personally identifying information to third parties unless we believe we are required to do so by law or have a good faith belief that such access, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to
(a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request,
(b) enforce the Gmail Terms of Use, including investigation of potential violations thereof,
(c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues (including, without limitation, the filtering of spam),
(d) respond to user support requests, or
(e) protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users and the public.

Clearly, they will provide personal information to anyone when they believe it is necessary to do either (a), (b), (c), (d), or (e).

If you look at the very first condition (a), you'll see that they explicitly define a government request as seperate from a "legal process", "law", or "regulation". Clearly, the act of obtaining and presenting a warrant or subpoena falls under the category of "legal process", which is identified as being different from a "government request".

As well, notice that that Google explicitly says that they will turn over personal information to "third parties". That could mean anyone-- your boss, your teacher, your parents, the RIAA, or even your Rabbi. The simple fact of the matter is that the only way to get privacy in e-mail is to run your own servers and only send and receive encrypted e-mail messages.

I'm not saying that Google is evil-- though they do admit that they will be more than helpful in providing anyone with your personal information if the request satisfies any of the above conditions which, in my opinion, are overly broad -- but I do think that any organisation that really cared about your privacy would have a simple policy: they would not turn over information unless the request was made through the legal process.

Other searchable email

The big thing with GMail apart from its space, is google's name behind the search feature. A proper search function really appears to be lacking in pretty much every major email client out there, once you get into large volumes of mail (which if you are reading this, you probably are) searching the mail takes serious amounts of time.

One existing, non-web, alternative is Bloomba [bloomba.com] which has a *great* search function, even on high volumes. My email client is already indexing well in excess of 10K messages (folders cap out at displaying >5K, I have two of those) so I dont have a real count), and searches all take less than a second.

Re:Instead of screenshots...

...I'm not to concerned about my mail privacy. I'm pretty open about my life because I have nothing to hide.... It's hard to have your privacy violated electronically when you don't leave much hidden.... in reality there is nothing to worry about for the majority of potential users [of Gmail].

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick!

Do they not teach history at all any more?

I'm Alexander Ivanovich Ladyzhenski. I have nothing to hide; despite my noble origins, I'm just interested in my job, teaching mathematics, in my native land of Russian. In 1937, Ladyzhenskaya was arrested in one of Stalin's purges and in a show trial convicted, for his family's status as minor nobility, an "enemy of the Russian people" and sentenced to death.

I'm Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have nothing to hide; I'm a minister and a theology professor. I'm just interested in being a good Christian, and keeping Christianity from being taken over by pagan practices in my native land of Germany. In 1943, Dr. Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo after his opposition to Hitler's racial policies and attempt to take over the German Church lead him to join a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was executed just three weeks before the Allied victory over Germany in 1945.

I'm Matthew Shepard. I have nothing to hide; well, except I'm gay, but I'll confide that to these two nice fellows I'm having drinks with in this bar. The two men Shepard was talking with, Aaron James McKinney and Russel (sic) Arthur Henderson, lured Shepard into leaving with them in their car. They then robbed, brutally beat, and tied Shepard to a fence, leaving him for dead. Found eighteen hours later, Shepard survived five more days before dying of his injuries.

The graveyards are full of people who "had nothing to hide" until a change in government or an encounter with thugs meant they suddenly found themselves outsiders and victims, members of some group considered "ok" to brutalize and oppress.

But of course, this is America, and it can't happen here, right? Matthew Shepard was just an exception, right?

I'm Fred Hampton. I have nothing to hide; I'm a member of the Black Panther Party fighting for civil rights and to end gang violence in Chicago. In 1969, asm part of is COINTELPRO program to suppress leftist dissent, the FBI provided the Chicago Police Department with the floor plan of Hampton's apartment. On December 4, police raided Hampton's apartment, firing automatic weapons. Hampton was found in his bed wounded by the police gunfire and possibly drugged by a police informant. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and the following exchange took place:

That's Fred Hampton
Is he dead?... Bring him out
He's barely alive; he'll make it.

Two shots were heard, which were fired point blank in Hampton's head. One officer then said:

He's good and dead now.

Hampton's body was dragged into the doorway of bedroom and left in a pool of blood.

A later investigation found that of the one hundred bullets fired in the raid, the police had fired ninety-nine; the single bullet fired by a Black Panther had been fired in a reflex spasm as the man died.

But you have nothing to hide.

msn and yahoo

last figures i saw showed approximately

40% of users use google
30% use msn
30% use yahoo
25% use aol
various others have smaller shares...

clearly some folks use more than one engine...

if google charged for search and they would suffer...

as original poster pointed out few complain about msn and yahoo cause they dont give a damn....hysterical ninnys will complain about just about anything so let em.

if you want free email from google, google will have the option of setting some terms...dont like em, dont use it.

move on.

If you need privacy...

If you want to mail sommat you don't want The Government to see, then use another method of mailing it.

I understand why people are a little freaked out by G-Mail, but really, if you need privacy, you shouldn't use ANY mail service that you aren't absolutely sure doesn't read email, and you should encrypt your message as plain text emails can be intercepted at any of the thousands of mail servers your mail will pass through.

Having worked for Google...

I can say that I trust them (the founders) pretty much totally. It probably had something to do with the posted signs saying "Don't be evil." All over the place. Its rule number 1. I also use gMail, and while I don't think its as amazing as people have made it out to be, its nice to not worry about inbox limits. If your still concerned about privacy think about this. They have your IP address and every search you've ever run, personally thats more revealing about me than most of my e-mails. Do they log them all in some huge scary database? No. But if you're paranoid enough to worry about bots reading your mail, you should probably think about that potentiality as well. -Ian

Mandatory Tinfoil Conspiracy Theory (MTCT)

You know what I think? I think the whole privacy issue is a "grassroots" campaign initiated, funded, and propogated by the one company scared spitless of Google: Microsoft.

My girlfriend's cousin's best friend's roommate in college reported that his brother-in-law (who works for Microsoft, so you know it's from a reliable source) tells me he "handles" the PR firm that is managing this whole campaign, to make it look like Google is a big, scary ursine terror, instead of the big fluffy teddy bear they really are. Microsoft has (to date) spent $1.2M buying advertising disguised as special-interest groups, "reporters" for major tech rags, and M&Ms for the office.

Really. Don't laugh at me like that. I'm serious. It's all part of Microsoft's astroturf campaign to discredit Google.

Usability

While 1GB is uber-cool and all that, it looks like gmail is not exactly a revolution in terms of usability and accessibility. Mark Pilgrim, of diveintomark.org, has a review [diveintomark.org] of these aspects of gmail which he summarizes as "The target market for Gmail appears to be vi users who use Internet Explorer... The only way Gmail could be less accessible is if the entire site were built in Flash."

The thing to be a cross between web mail and a desktop email client: it is written in several hundred kilobytes of javascript.

Random thought...

Is there any technical reason why you couldn't write some clever code that would allow you to mount GMail as a networked drive, just like Konqueror does with its multi-protocol support?

Files would be stored as attachments, along with a file allocation table of some sort. Send a mail to yourself to write a file; delete the mail to erase it.. but all totally transparent to you. It'd be a bit slow, but some clever caching/buffering could take care of that.

You could theoretically get it to span across several accounts to store files larger than a gig. Just add un/pw's to a config file to increase your storage capacity.

Even if they don't end up providing pop3/smtp, you can still just script the html sessions like YahooPOPs! does.

POP3/SMTP?

Without POP and SMTP support, who really cares? I don't have time to check 50 emails a day on a web interface.

For web email I use mailvault, and for real email I use gmx, which still gives you free POP3 and SMTP.

Searching is actually the weakest feature of gmail

I've had a beta account for about a week now, and ironically enough I find the search feature the most lacking.

You can only do whole word searches... if you want to search for emails from your friend Bob Chuzzlewit-Pumblechook, and you have ten friends named Bob, you can't shorten your search by searching for "Chuzz", as that will return nothing.

Kind of ironic, since on any other email client you can search for partial words.

Trust, but verify

We need to trust Google, and others with similar promises, to progress with our interconnected infosphere. In order to trust people with material this valuable, we subject them to audit. We audit banks, we audit factories, we audit farms, we even audit gameshows. We need to audit Google. Google needs to be auditable. Their source code, while proprietary, needs to be audited by an auditor without other financial interest in Google, unlike the Enron/Anderson incest. And who audits the auditors? Other auditors - like a web of psychoanalysts, or peer-reviewing scientists, the web of trust must be at all levels, and open to verification on demand.

Gmail wants to change my brain.

I use Google's search toolbar constantly. After a few days of using Gmail, I feel like Google is doing their best to make me even more dependent on searching (which in turn makes me dependent on their company).

The "Search Mail" box is always at the top of your page, on any screen, and since Gmail encourages you not to delete anything, the Search box becomes the easiest way to find stuff. (If there's a way to sort alphabetically by sender or subject, I haven't figured it out.) I think if I used Gmail regularly, it would make my brain even more more search-reliant in my daily life. It's one thing to have a cookie on my computer, but it's another thing to feel like they're messing with my brain. THAT is a privacy concern.