Gmail is too creepy?

Is Google moving into that realm previously dominated by Microsoft? I'm talking about that area of they're-so-big-they're-creepy-and-I-don't-trust-them.

Well, the folks that run www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com certainly think so. They have a series of arguments which I admit are mostly correct, and yet I don't quite agree with their conclusions. Their stand is that you shouldn't send email to people with a GMail addres because you don't know what will happen to your email.

They say, I say:

• Gmail is nearly immortal: Because their large storage space discourages deleting messages, email will be on their servers kept almost for perpetuity. This is actually a selling point for Gmail. By saying that this is a Bad Thing, you are actually, in principle, against any form of owner-identified data kept on a public access network.


• Google's policies do not apply: The scope of Google's privacy policies are under debate - for example, do they adequately cover people who are sending email to Gmail? I believe that again, the problem exists for most Internet email providers. Why doesn't the same argument apply for Hotmail or Yahoo? Or perhaps he's saying it does.


• A massive potential for abuse: Because it's likely that a large (nay, ginormous) number of people will use GMail, data mining will be a temptation for the Powers That Be. I will admit that this is a risk. And we haven't pulled Orkut into the picture yet (which Google is associated with).
  
• Inappropriate ad matching: Because a computer, not a human, determines what ads are run, you run the risk of viewing inappopriate ads. All I can say is this: Yeah, mistakes will be made - live with it.