Evidently it's not a joke, the founder of Blogger, now owned by Google, claims he's been using it for a while.
posted by mt at 10:06

I had a brief moment of paranoia, when I saw people claiming that Gmail was an April Fool's joke. But would the NYTimes report on a joke? Don't answer that...
posted by mt at 10:04

Welcome to Gmail. Wow - Google is hands down the most interesting company of late. As if their search techniques weren't radical (and effective) - check out their email plans. Some features? A Google built email search - that would behandy. 1 GIGABYTE OF MAIL STORAGE! That is crazy - Google is giving people a Gig of storage. Let that sink in for a moment.

No pop ups, no banners - only text ads. They are making an effective push to keep all of your mail on their servers, where they will constantly stream simple, but relevant ads. They don't want you to delete anything Brilliant.

But it's kind of like selling your soul. Plenty of space, fast, clean, superb search. BUT - Google keeps all of your mail. And what will they do with it?

posted by mt at 10:02

This is the first I've heard of Google's email plans, but there are some major privacy implications. The thing I don't know - do the others (Hotmail, Yahoo) do this - read the message and insert relevant ads (ala Google Adwords)? I would bet my life Hotmail and MS do something like this. In my brief dealings with Hotmail, they seem to craft spam messages from people with names similar to those in your address book - very creepy. I'm curious to see Google's interface to the mail system, since I appreciate their clean and simple search pages.
posted by mt at 10:02

Fascinating report on a ramification of outsourcing few consider. We know how offshore consulting affects jobs, salaries and the economy, but what about privacy? What happens when your data goes overseas - where it's no longer protected by HIPAA or GLB? It's scary to say the least.
posted by mt at 09:02