Fwd: philosophical question about gmail

[John Abreau]

On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 17:00, Michael ODonnell wrote:

> I'd assume the pool of eyeballs available here
> on the GNHLUG list to be highly desirable to an
> advertiser, but Google has provided the GNHLUG
> with precisely nothing in return for access
> to those eyeballs.  Of course, the fact that
> they're all likely to be obscenely rich after
> the imminent IPO has nothing to do with my total
> lack of sympathy toward them...  ;->

What if someone subscribes with a Hotmail address? Microsoft owns 
Hotmail, and could potentially scan any mail on their site, and 
Microsoft has provided the GNHLUG with precisely nothing in return 
for access to those eyeballs. 

The same thing applies to Comcast, or Earthlink, or the blu.org mail 
server that I run. In principle, anyone who operates a mail server 
could do the same sort of scanning that you suggest Google might decide 
to do someday. 

I've never seen any evidence that Google is actually doing this, or 
has plans to do so in the future. All I've seen is speculation that 
we can't know for certain that they aren't. If there is any actual 
evidence out there, why not provide us with a link to it? 

-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9
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