Reply #10: No way. This was very, very different [View All]

[Osamasux]

Google was data mining to sell information on your personal email to their advertisers. That's not even on the same planet as scanning for spam or threats. This was a really sleazy move. I'll dig up some of the old articles. There were plenty. Google only dropped it in part because that was around the time they were preparing to go public and the publicity was hurting the IPO.

Here is an April 14, 2004 article discussing legislation California State Senator Liz Figueroa was drafting to get them to drop the plans, as well as actions being taken by privacy groups, Great Britain and the European Union.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=450

>The complaints against Google’s GMail and its use of AdWords Contextual
>Advertising to show text ads targeted to actual email content may
>have driven Google to reconsider the advertising format used to fund
>the 1 GB of storage space used in the new Google free email service."
SNIP

>In addition to potential Californian legislation there have been some
>other news making protests of Google’s plans for GMail advertising.
>On April 6, the World Privacy Forum and 27 other privacy and civil
>liberties organizations composed an open letter calling upon Google
>to suspend its Gmail service until the privacy issues are adequately
>addressed. Also last week, Privacy International urged Britain’s
>information commissioner to take action against the service,
>heating up privacy advocates in the EU.
SNIP


On April 30, 2004 Google filed the IPO
http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/29/technology/google/

The timing fits to a tee.