Fwd: philosophical question about gmail

[Kevin D. Clark]

"Jeff Macdonald" <macfisherman at gmail.com> writes:

> Some one, be it a company or an individual, is going to 'profit' in
> some way from content on a mailing list. I don't think that's bad.

OK, let's apply Occam's Razor for a moment and ignore the issue of
whether the mail in question comes from a mailing list.

Suppose that I send you a private email that says "Dude, I think that
the new Dodge Magnum looks like a phat hearse!!!" 

 (note that I never said whether I liked or disliked the car... (-:)

Suppose that I sent this mail to you not knowing Gmail's privacy
policy, and not having accepted this policy either.

When you read the mail, you're probably going to see the mail
accompanied by an ad for the Dodge Magnum.

But, suppose that some marketing person at Dodge thinks to ask "I
wonder if people think the car looks like a hearse?".  Suppose this
person contracts Google to display ads when the keywords "dodge",
"magnum", and "hearse" come up.  Dodge is going to get feedback from
Google regarding these keywords (my understanding is that this will be
in aggregate, both from web searches and Gmail scanning).


Question: why should my email assist this Dodge marketing person?

After all, the email was private and I never agreed to Gmail's
policies.  I never really wanted anybody to actually profit
(technically speaking) from the email; I just wanted to make a private
comment.  Neither Dodge nor Google compensated me for my opinion
either.


Again, I still haven't made up my mind about Gmail...I'm just asking
questions.

Regards,

--kevin
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