gmail (Google Mail & Ads) [was- Re: Fwd: [ILUG] Google Job ]

[John McCormac]

Brian Foster wrote:
 > and yer point is.... ?? I do not know how the quoted claim --- to a
 > certain audience, Google's gmail is the worst idea since TIA --- was
 > measured, but it seems plausible.  (there may be some poetic license
 > there too.  so what?)

The conspiracy mode thought process runs as follows:
TIA distracts from the existing systems and their extensions. US
Government announces that it is backing down from TIA after listening to
the concerns of the people. Of course the concerns of the people
continue to be listened to - just not in the way that they expect. ;)
Perhaps I am too cynical.

Gmail probably builds upon existing structures and procedures. And these
have been in place on all search engines (to some extent) over the past
few years. On the net, there is no such thing as privacy anymore. The
privacy activists seem to be up in arms over something that has almost
disappeared. The whole Gmail thing is just a small part of the greater
erosion of privacy that has been happening for the last few years. The
existing structures in Gmail's case would be the same kind of
advertising technology that is used for adverts on Google Groups. The
suprising thing is that Google has not done this already. But in cynical
editor mode, I would tend to view the Gmail move as a logical one
against Microsoft. After all Microsoft is making noises about getting
into the search business in a major way and this would give Google an
angle on Hotmail/MSN.

I would not consider the article to be breaking news. It is more a
pre-IPO puff piece than news. The run up to an IPO generally results in
a blizzard of these types of articles. The Observer is generally good
compared to other Sunday newspapers but the reporting is more of a
filler without any deep analysis. In otherwords, technology journalism
of the dot.bomb type.

 > and the point has not actually missed people:  earlier today I saw a
 > report (cannot recall where, sorry!) giving yet another inept Google
 > upper management quote, where they failed to promise that people's
 > browser/search records would not be collated with their gmail
 > records, and also failed to promise those records would not be kept
 > for a long time:  the sort of data-mining one can do with a large,
 > long-term database of collated browsing and e-mail would seem to go
 > far far beyond the concerns you have eloquently expressed above.
 > people who can get search warrants and court orders could have a
 > field-day with that!

Most search engines already log queries and IPs. Now with the move 
towards fixed IPs rather than dynamic ones, the information from these 
queries could be cross checked against IP ownership data. Google already 
uses geotargeting for its adverts so the originating countries of users 
are already identified. (Though the IP databases are too flakey to rely 
on for 100% accurate identification.)

I've been somewhat wary about expressing some of my concerns about this
because I don't want some technology journalist quoting me out of
context. The commercial datamining stuff out there is more far
terrifying because almost everyone now has their own data footprint and
the majority of people are probably totally unaware of kind of data that
is available.

Regards...jmcc
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