Well, it's April 2nd, and Google's GMail site is still up. The consensus seems to be that it's real, and that it's brilliant, and will make them piles upon piles of money.
I think it's telling that the objections are couched in terms of "some privacy advocates say there are problems". From the AP wire article:
[Google founder Larry] Page said Gmail shouldn't raise serious privacy concerns because Google plans to closely guard the content of the e-mail messages. ... "We think e-mail is one of those things that is not as useful and as well organized as it should be," Page said.
In other words, "we promise not to look at your email". That's what a service provider has to do in any case -- the system operator can always snoop your email box -- but scanning emails to place ads raises the stakes of this. The entire world has become an advertising zone. Even our own bodies are part of it; yesterday I saw a young African-American woman wearing a vinyl jacket with the "Oreo" and "Ritz" logos plastered on the back. (Try to unpack the dense symbology of that particular combination of signs!)
Further, plugging Orkut into GMail would give them a profile of what you are writing, to whom, and how often, cross-referenced with what you have searched for and purchased; it's total demographic awareness. It's too juicy a technology not to be appropriated by the government at some point down the road -- kind of a privatized Total Information Awareness.
Ads are so ubiquitous that barely a peep is heard to object to this new curtailment of ad-free space. Indeed, it's hardly possible to dissent from this -- after all, they're just doing it out of capitalistic necessity. If you don't want the ads, you can pay for your email (which essentially means that you're underwriting the ads anyway). The opening of a new advertising frontier is synonymous with the "organization" of the chaotic electronic realm, in much the same way that the obsolescence of cash will "organize" and, importantly, render trackable the lawless underground economy. Soon, only outlaws will use cash, and only outlaws will use paid email -- because they will be the only ones with anything to hide.
Posted by Chris at April 2, 2004 06:57 AMI never thought I was interesting enough for anyone to want to read my email. Hell, I can barely get people to read my blog. Like they used to say in the early 70s, though. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you."
Hi, neighbor. I picked up your link over at the Talking Dog. I'm an Oaklander, too. I'm sure there's a few of us, but you're the first I've come across, so I just wanted to say "howdy."
I look forward to reading your blog in the weeks and months ahead.
Posted by: r. Houston Bridges at April 5, 2004 04:54 PM