Why Google's Gmail should be allowed to serve ads

(April 16 2004) Google's new email service is not a threat to your privacy, Pandia argues.

The PR people at Google is having an unusual experience: bad publicity. Google has for a long time been the darling of the internet press -- for obvious reasons: they have a very good product.

Now, however, the Web is awash with articles on Google violating the privacy of the common man, reading their mail and acting like "big brother".

The background is as follows:

Google is testing a new free email service called Gmail.

Unlike services like Yahoo! Mail and MSN's Hotmail, Google will give away a lot of storage. Users can keep as much as 1 gigabyte worth of email messages and appendixes. The idea is that you should be able to keep all your mail, in order to use Google's search technology to search for your own stored information.

The email service is accessed through a regular Web browser, meaning that you can read your mail on any computer connected to the internet, wherever you are in the world.

Google is currently testing the new service, using Google employees and specially invited outsiders. The service will be launched as soon as the system is stable.

Here's the catch. Google will finance the new service by presenting relevant text ads.

If you look at the left hand column of this page, you will see a box with text ads generated by Google. Google's computers make an analysis of what this page "is about", and present ads of relevance to the topic of this article.

Google will use the same technology on the pages presented by the Gmail service. Hence, when you get a mail from a friend regarding his or her holiday in Greece, you will also get a few ads on -- for instance -- Greek hotels.

Google will scan the text of the mail to see if there is a pattern based on the repetition of particular terms, synonyms etc.

Google does this automatically, on the fly. There are no human beings actually reading the mail. Nevertheless, some people have found this hard to swallow. They fear for their privacy and try their best to stop Google from using text ads in this way.

Privacy International has filed a formal complaint with the U.K.'s information commissioner office (ICO). California state Democratic senator Liz Figueroa says she is considering proposing legislation to stop Google from launching Gmail as it is now.

We will argue that Google should be allowed to use this technology.

Remember that Google's email service will be free of charge. They are actually willing to give you 1 gigabyte of storage space. Most online mail service will give you some 100 MB at most, and you will have to pay to get more.

However, Google must get something back for this "gift", and they have found that including text ads is the most efficient way of generating the revenue needed. No intrusive banner ads or flashing animations; we are talking about plain, fast-loading, text ads.

You are not forced to use this service. If you feel uncomfortable about the presence of such ads, find another.

Yes, but Google employees will have the opportunity to read your mail, won't they? It is technically feasible, for sure, but that applies to all online mail services, including Yahoo! Mail and HotMail.

If you use these service, you must trust the companies to keep their promise not to read your mail. Actually, they are forbidden to do so.

Google's software programs will read your mail, but to them your text is just a string of characters. By counting the number of keywords they may "see" that your mail "about" something, but they do not "care" whether it's about cars or something more exotic. These are computers. Computers don't care.

Google could make use of aggregated data. They could use a program to determine -- let's say -- how many users are writing about the summer olympics or the latest TV soap. Advertisers would love to get access to such data.

Still, this is not the same as finding that Harry Nielsen, 44 Brin Avenue, Frankfurt am Main, has a secret interest in lingerie. He remains as anonymous as ever, unless Google decides to do otherwise. Google won't. That would damage their brand beyond repair.

What Google has to do, however, is to make it perfectly clear to anyone using the service, that the data may be used for such purposes (if that is the case). People must not be tricked into using Gmail. We have no reason to believe that Google is out to fool anyone.

Moreover, they should establish a fee based alternative, where users may pay to make use of the Gmail service without being served ads.

According to the Industry Standard the British ICO is not too concerned.

"As long as Google makes it clear that it is monitoring e-mail usage and passing that information on for marketing purposes, there shouldn't be a problem," one spokeswoman said. "But I want to make it clear that Google has not even launched the service yet, and has agreed to work with us to make sure that its notification process is very clear."

Google has also been criticized for storing messages, even after they have been deleted by the user. Some have argued that this may be in violation of US and European data protection and privacy laws.

If Google decides to keep such data for years, we can see the problem, but they must be allowed to keep backup copies of data in case of technical errors. We would prefer Google to keep an extra copy of our deleted mail, rather than risk loosing all our data due to a harddisk failure.

We need public watchdogs and people should be vigilant when facing new technologies. However, these watchdogs are overreacting.

Gmail press release.
Gmail FAQ
Search Engine Watch: Google Launches Gmail, Free Email Service
Privacy issues continue to dog Google's Gmail (The Industry Standard)

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