Steve, I take your point that it isn’t very valuable to advertise something I already know about…for me and arguably not for the advertiser (good thing it is billed by CPM). As for my brother, I will check with him to see what ad he received when he opens the mail…I’m sure he got the same one.

And as you say, as far as privacy goes, there are certainly ways to manage it. And your business behind the firewall is one…that is until Google releases Enterprise Gmail Server where businesses are running the same solution behind the firewall.

Lou, if that immediacy of placement of the AHS is supposed to be a value-added service, I have to say that it is a pretty dumb one! After all, it seems to have been cued by your writing a “fan” letter for the company; so you are the last person in cyberspace that needs to be told about them! The ad should have appeared along with the message your BROTHER RECEIVED, but do you know how your brother reads his mail? (Mine only uses his Gmail account when he cannot get to his Comcast account.) From my point of view, your experience is right up there with the Amazon.com recommendations I get for books I already own (some of which I have written about in very derogatory language)!

I’ve given similar thought to how Google handles ad placement on my blog:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-logic-of-system.html

At the end of the day, however, I do not think it does me much good to worry about it. When privacy is necessary, I either get behind a firewall (for my business life) or refrain from writing (for my personal life).

I generally agree with Peter that, when it comes to who sets the priorities, the shareholders tend to trump all other factors. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see that, in Google’s case, China may have trumped at least one faction of shareholders:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/05/things-are-still-black-and-white-at.html

As users we have to look out for ourselves and, as you put it, “beware!”

Pete: Agree that is user beware. Extending this beyond Google, however, is there really anything stopping any email provider (aside from patents) from copying the Google model. Right now Google is the focal point because they are the ones most successfully executing their strategy by leveraging the power of Ad Words everywhere.

The thing to think about is everyone is going to catch up at some point. Nothing to stop other web mail providers. Nothing to really even stop this type of technology and revenue drivers from being deployed in POP3 solutions as well.

Simply move back the email analysis layer back in the architecture, tail a contextual ad to the bottom of your email and then send along to the recipient. Furthermore, is there anything really stopping a *paid* broadband service from saying they are going to do it as well? Truth is, unless you are running your own mail service, this is something that is a possibility.

Lou,

I agree with you. “Exact and immediate” is a little too close to the bone. The user experience and spam-resistance of gmail makes it seductive, though one would have to think twice before sending anything remotely confidential or of commercial value through it.

Relying on a commercial enterprise like Google to guarantee any protection of privacy is a major folly. Their only true responsibility is to their shareholders. And their actions (e.g. censorship in China) have proven that winning comes first, doing no evil, somewhere thereafter.

Google is in the midst of a very high-stakes game. With so many employees, there is no practical way to ensure that elements, rogue or not, cannot exploit your personal correspondence.

In the end, it is up to consumers to choose. For those who don’t want their email data mined, broadband access usually comes with a free email account. For the completely paranoid–yet technically savvy and insistent on the cool gmail.com address–there is always FireGPG, which recently got Slashdotted. No telling if it stops drafts from getting auto-saved, though.