April 13, 2004

Google's Gmail may face strong legal opposition

While I am all for our respective legislature protecting us from "bad companies", I think in Google's case the California Democratic Senator Liz Figueroa has gone too far.

Google's email service, although in a way it can be seen as an "invasion of privacy", if Google email users KNOW that their email is going to have advertisements placed in it, based on the email content - this should be no problem.

It's bad when companies do things without telling anyone, but if the user knows, up front - let capitalism take its course.

Ireland onilne is reporting that Google's planned free email, set up as a rival to Microsoft's Hotmail and to Yahoo!, may be facing strong legal opposition after a Californian state senator said she was drafting legislation to block the Gmail service.

Democratic Senator Liz Figueroa has said that Gmail is "an invasion of privacy", referring to Google's plan to make revenue from users agreeing to their incoming email being scanned for targeted advertising. (full story)

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