Google's gmail and the issues some people have

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3560266&thesection=technology&thesubsection=general&thesecondsubsection=

What's up with the people complaining? It's free email that has to be paid for somehow. If people agree to the conditions (the scanning of the email to display appropriate ads being one), then what's the problem? If people want privacy they could go elsewhere.

When will gmail be online ? for public ?

What the HELL ??? I cannot believe that they think it is a matter that should be legislated against?

Are they completely fucking mad? Well, yes, we already knew they were (Janet Jackson MTV furore anyone?).....but this is just ludicrous.

I'm lost for words really.....

hmmm...

its kinda interesting...

i understand what you guys are saying... but i don't want my e-mails scanned, period.

its not the advertising side that i mind, its the reading of my e-mails...

dont you think that people should be able to choose?

it doesnt bother me really id just use it as a large storage location i think i should be able to choose.

Don't use google's gmail then and get a proper email address that is not subsidised through advertising. It's quite simple.

If you want to make use of a free service it must be paid for somehow. This is through advertising. I think the only issue would be if they didn't tell users there email was going to be scanned for the purposes of the embedded advertising with allows them to run this free service.

Then don't use email, or use encryption... every email you send (or receive for that matter) is like a postcard. Doesn't matter whether it's gmail or your ISP or your own server (unless that server is properly secured, and you're sending email to others on that server).

People... A little word on google and the advertising model it employs.

Because I buy its advertising and I also display its advertising, I get a nice $US cheque every month for doing so.


Google never ceases to amaze me with their very intelligent use of content.

Here's are some links to how google has gone from a University project to a billion dollar company that Microsoft and Yahoo now want a piece of.

From Google
https://www.google.com/adsense/overview

An example of a site that I display Google Adsense Ads on and believe me, the advertising revenue more than covers the cost of running the site:
http://eoddata.com

Another one on which a friend makes thousands of $US a month
http://knoppix.net




Its content based advertising, google - in its usual spidering - caches the pages and their key words and once you paste the generic code into your site, the advertising just adjusts to suit.

There's not a single human in sight to read the page and see if it is "worthy". NOR WILL THERE BE WITH GMAIL.

The Google servers will simply take an index of the words used and display essentially adsense ads next to your hotmail.



So your friend tells you they have the flu and voila.. there's a clarityne ad where you'd normally have other advertising on Hotmail for example. Ummm... sorry but I like the sound of that, makes for much more interesting content on the page rather than Hotmail's current "oh you're a New Zealand user... i'll stick a sorted.org.nz banner in there for you" approach.

I imagine it will take and index of your sent items and put some relevant content related advertising in rotation too... Particularly because if you were the one that sent the fact that you had a flu... you're really the one that was the target audience.



It really isnt that much to ask. I hope the above gives some understanding so you dont do the whole "fuck that they're looking into my life" thing without understanding what is actually going on.