This argument is really vacuous and makes an inappropriate analogy.<p>First, we need to distinguish between attaching ads to <i>the mail experience</i> versus injecting them into the <i>actual content</i>. In the original post, this service would actually open these letters and insert ads into them. This is not even remotely comparable to what most email providers do. They insert ads around the service, but never actually alter the content of the email. A better analogy would be receiving a discount on branded stamps or allowing advertisements to be displayed on your mailbox.<p>Second, the use of the term "read" when discussing advertising is asinine, disingenuous and probably detrimental to the conversation (inasmuch as it can provoke unnecessary fear in non-technical users). "Read" implies active evaluation and comprehension, conceivably by a person. The GMail algorithm does not "read" email in the classical sense. It systematically evaluates the content in a way isn't even remotely comparable to "reading." (This doesn't mean that this sort of advertising isn't bad, but portraying it in the way he did is just unnecessary fear mongering.)<p>Third, the OP seems to decry "keeping a copy" as some sort of violation. GMail is a webmail service. What the fuck are they supposed to do if not store your mail?<p>Fourth, this service actually seems like a good idea, and is probably something I would use for various types of mail. The price of mail been steadily increasing, and I would be fine with these practices if I knew they were saving me money. I'm willing to tolerate advertising so long as I know that the service is improving my life. Like I do with 95% of the things I use.<p>In conclusion, this is a very dubious analogy that doesn't really contribute to the pragmatic discussion of cost versus privacy.
I don't know why this still surprises people, or why Google is being singled out here. Information is transmitted by copying. Every provider has to look at and analyze your messages if they want to do clever things to them, like let you search your archived mail server-side. Even if they don't do anything with your messages themselves, they're still compelled by the government to parse through it all. Nothing is safe.<p>Whenever anyone asks me to explain how the Internet works, I don't talk about tubes or connected servers, because thinking your message is "in" a pipe is a broken abstraction; it makes people imagine nothing sees or touches your messages until they arrive at the destination. Instead, the mental model I encourage people to have for Internet is that "each packet is like a message stuck to a big public message board." Privacy is not the default; it's a public system, and privacy is something you have to actively create on top of it (via encryption, onion-routing, etc.)
In my opinion, this kind of argument is demagoguery and ignores practical security concerns.<p>For the average person, which is more likely?<p>(1) A hacker taking over their email account to get bank info, etc.<p>(2) Some nebulous threat from Google having too much information about you.<p>Google and Gmail offer some of the best security controls and threat detection of any webmail provider that I've seen (pioneered two-factor authentication for email, warn you about strange sign-in activity on your account, allow you to kill other sessions, etc.).<p>If the outcome of this kind of article is people move to less secure email because of some intangible threat, I think it's a net harm. Gmail is still the best choice for my mom.<p>I wrote about this more than a year ago at greater length on my blog: <a href="http://www.maxmasnick.com/2012/02/12/gmail_paranoia/" rel="nofollow">http://www.maxmasnick.com/2012/02/12/gmail_paranoia/</a> and there's more discussion on HN at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3582609" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3582609</a><p>My point is that any post criticizing Gmail for it's business model should also consider what is realistically a problem in the actual world (hacking) and hopefully offer some advice on what to do about it. I'm not sure this kind of "Google reads all your email and it's terrible. Full stop." post is very helpful.<p>Ok, a couple more things to preempt the inevitable trolling:<p>(1) Government snooping is a separate issue, but as far as I know there are no major email providers that a non-technical person can use that aren't vulnerable. We sorely need easy-to-use, widely used email encryption. Google isn't likely to do this because it would be counter to their business model, and this _is_ a problem.<p>(2) I don't use Gmail myself, but not because they are algorithmically reading my email. I switched (to FastMail) because I don't like the design direction of the Gmail UX, the FastMail UX is substantially faster, and the support is better (i.e. it exists). However, given that the average webmail user (a) doesn't want to pay for email and (b) is going to use one of the most popular services by default, I still think Gmail is a good choice.
Machine "reading" the email != humans reading the same thing<p>A machine can't laugh at your embarrassing confession. Nor can a machine talk about your letter to its friends.<p>For either of these things to happen with gmail would require serious risk and effort on part of an employee.
So... Can I still get the free snail mail for life? I don't have a twitter account, and I'm not going to register one just to get free snail mail for life...<p>I hope that you can afford the postage, as I intend to embark on a mega mass mail campaign for a few dozen different customers, and the thought of free postage is quite enticing...<p>/s
What if Schnail Mail automatically filtered postal junk mail so you never had to receive another piece again?<p>What if it let you search the contents of every printed message you'd ever sent or received?<p>What if it let you send international mail, with attachments, for free?<p>What if it protected you and more susceptible friends and family from postal scams?<p>What if it informed you that your recipient no longer existed at the address you used?<p>What if it let you undo sending of mail you regret writing?<p>...<p>A free postal mail service that truly replicated Gmail's functionality would probably appeal to many, even with inserted ('relevant') ads and all the privacy issues.<p>Paid versions of such a service already exist (e.g. <a href="https://www.earthclassmail.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.earthclassmail.com/</a> ). A free equivalent could be pretty disruptive.
This is just a re-hash of Microsoft's Scroogled campaign (<a href="http://www.scroogled.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.scroogled.com</a>). Just as with scroogled, the comparison of a human reading your mail with a machine analysing the contents in order to provide focussed advertising results in a complete loss of credibility.
The problem with email is that we've arrived at a monoculture. TLS-enabled email is pretty secure if nobody can compromise either of the two ends (or, well, the intermediaries). Since everyone uses Gmail, it's trivial to just get everyone's email, since one of the two ends is pretty much guaranteed to be there.<p>If we move to a system where everyone has their own mail server, or at least one mail server for a few people, that system will be much harder to snoop on.
The analogy is a bit leaky IMHO. Gmail doesn't add advertisements to the mails you are sending out. They only add ads to the messages you received and are looking at in your browser. If you don't want to see any ads, just use an IMAP client and you'll get the original message.<p>In-fact, not altering the mails their users are sending was one of the unique features when gmail launched. AFAIR both Hotmail and Yahoo were altering the messages of their users to include ads.<p>The part about reading the mail is true though, but on the other hand: Unless you host your own email server, it is absolutely impossible to be sure that nobody is going to read your mail as it is stored on the mailbox server (it also can (and is as we now know) be read in transit most of the time and outside of your control).<p>As such, I honestly trust Google more than I trust $ISP. Usually $ISP is equal to $CARRIER and those, IMHO, are the personified evil, so I wouldn't trust them at all. But even $ISP != $CARRIER, I still think that the bigger the mail provider company, the safer your messages probably are there (minus government spying, but that works regardless of ISP): Bigger providers are bigger targets and thus have likely invested more in data security and internal procedures to make sure mail isn't being read by humans unless strictly needed.<p>If you don't want ads in your Google-served email while using the web interface, get a paid Google Apps Account. No ads, very flexible email routing and actual customer support. For $50 per year per user. That doesn't say anything about the data being used for other marketing purposes of course, but, as I said, that problem is the same everywhere unless you self-host (which is reasonably complicated and annoying to do).<p>TBH when I was running a free email service in the early 2000s I really had to fight the temptation to just run grep over /var/mail and have some fun. I think the smaller the company (it was just me and my colleague back then), the bigger the risk that one unethical person can do serious damage.
The article is a bit demagogic, because saying "we open your letters" is not the same thing as "Google algorithm reads your email."<p>I don't defend Google here, and I also stopped using Gmail, but not for the reasons mentioned in the article. Storing the emails and mechanically parsing them wouldn't be a problem for me, if they could ensure that those emails will not leak out of Google - but that is not technically nor legally possible (at least nowadays).
I didn't realize this was satire until I saw the Google logo, and I thought it was an awesome idea. "Oh, just like Gmail, but they're really open and honest about it."<p>I guess the reason Google and the like have to conceal their intentions is because there seem to be few people (three out of an audience in the example) who are willing to go into it knowing the terms (or admit to be willing). A lot more people are happy with signing up for the service not stopping to consider why a corporations would be so charitable, then finding out and joining the outrage bandwagon [while continuing to use the service].<p>This pattern seems insincere or dishonest (for the most part, always exceptions, etc), and I'm hoping it's a fad that dies out, as opposed to the value proposition getting bashed to death. Every other week there's a great tutorial on how to switch to duck duck go and roll your own everything, those are the honest sincere solutions for the truly interested.
This is a far better mockery/attack on Google's strategy than Microsoft's Scroogle campaign ever was. They should learn from this. I especially loved the cute & funny one-liners.<p>(Not that I support Scroogle, it's a cheap shot. I hate negative marketing. It's setting a bad example in tech, which has mostly kept the negative marketing away.)
I like the way this has been presented, but have to admit that I disagree with the point - if someone's willing to give me something for free (monetary) in exchange for reading info I pass through their services I'm fine with that - I just won't use their service to send anything I don't want them to read.
There are good arguments for privacy, and for people/organisations being open about how they use any personal data they collect, but in this scenario you've willingly and knowingly signed up to a contract; and in doing so invalidated your right to be upset by the required "payment method" of information.
Anyone who has ever Googled their name and hometown must realize how much information is being sold about us. Google is just presenting the top layer, but this problem is a very old one. For better or worse, I think we have to get used to a post-privacy society. If it forces us to be more tolerant of each other's imperfections (because our own are shared with the world) all the better.
Knowing in advance that the intent is to read my mail feels icky and invasive. Google did not start out reading our mail; their approach was a classic case of the slow-boiled toad (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog</a>).<p>Perhaps you should gain users confidence and trust first by NOT reading their mail and giving them an opportunity to become reliant on the service. At less than 0.50 per piece, postal mail is not so expensive that it weights a risk/benefit analysis in your favor with this model. Most people would probably opt to just continue paying for their mail versus having it read. (Also, not sure people want to create bad friend karma -- ha! -- by having their friends spammed with "junk" mail.)<p>Moving from critiquing to finding a more viable option: I think you can still make money with this upfront by "skinning" the mail with fully printed ad envelopes (obviously with windows for the addresses to show) paid for by general consumer advertisers who don't have as much of a need for making sure they are hitting a niche group.<p>Once, and if, you gain a critical mass of users then you could introduce the "read" option with some kind of incentive to get people to opt-in. At least they will trust you more by that time, theoretically. And you could then sign up more advertisers including niche marketers.<p>The current model is not palatable -- unless it were used by a small business/entrepreneur that is sending marketing mail and therefore does not care if it is read (but that then poses a problem of them potentially having a competitor's materials inserted with their materials). If the model remains as is I would have to say #schnailmailfail.<p>-Felicia Joy
@feliciajoy
I was disappointed that it isn't real. This would have been a great way to keep in touch with prisoners, whose mail is being read anyways. It would have been nice to type letters without needing to print them out and mail it, and "free" sealed the deal.
This is the guy that did an expenses paid tech talk where one of the big sponsors is heavily involved in the gambling industry, and then proceeded to publicly bitch out another speaker for doing a talk on technical hurdles of some kind of sports betting platform because betting companies are evil. Can't really have any less respect for someones opinion or thoughts when they are so ill-mannered and hypocritical.
Seems like it could be argued both the gag, Schnail Mail, and the real gmail are fairly upfront in the relationship with the user. Advertising is present. Obviously, some technical differences but it IS disclosed!
Is this kind of like - <a href="http://www.promotinglinux.com/truth/" rel="nofollow">http://www.promotinglinux.com/truth/</a> (just for fun)<p>Or is this supposed to be a sarcastic poke at gmail, the NSA, etc?
Funny, but for extra laughs they should add a section on PRISM: We keep scanned copies of all your snail mail indefinitely, which the NSA can access through our PRISM backdoor on a moments notice. ;)
Google could offer a $20/month no-ads no-tracking email service. How many privacy conscious people are willing to pay that? Its not Google deciding to do this, its just ourselves.
Give me Adblock for Reality and I might think about it.<p><a href="http://chromeadblock.com/freedom/" rel="nofollow">http://chromeadblock.com/freedom/</a>