Hotmail Watch Out!

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 2:42 pm

For those fans of webmail accounts check out this!

http://www.google.ca/press/pressrel/gmail.html

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 2:59 pm

Saw this about a week ago (most thought it was an April's Fool thingy

)

but....
with present compitition (alltheweb for one) and future increased compitition on the search engien area, Google have to branch out.
I just hope that they don't stop/loose the fast searching that they are renowned for and turns into some Yahoo/Alta Vista thingy - which is actually the only main reason I have for using Google.

But I think their goal of 1GB of free space will most likely get re-thought eventually, depending on how good they will be at stopping spam.

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 3:15 pm

lol! Well presently, at least, this does appear quite attractive

btw, another great search engine is: http://www.teoma.com
I think it may actually be better than Google.

Scayde · Post by **Scayde** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 3:42 pm

Wow !!!..I can't wait for this thing to go on line !

T'lainya · Post by **T'lainya** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 4:27 pm

This is from googles gmail questions site
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html#ads

8. Are there ads in Gmail?

There are no pop-ups or banner ads in Gmail. Gmail does include relevant text ads that are similar to the ads appearing on the right side of Google search results pages. The matching of ads to content is a completely automated process performed by computers using the same technology that powers the Google AdSense program. This technology already places targeted ads on thousands of sites across the web by quickly analyzing the content of pages and determining which ads are most relevant to them. No humans read your email to target the ads, and no email content or other personally identifiable information is ever provided to advertisers.

I don't like this part of it at all

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 4:38 pm

@T'L, It sounds a bit like the unpaid for version of Opera that I use... So far this has not been too bad.

I understand the concern, though given hotmail's spam blitzing and the highly commercialised aspect of the site Gmail looks a bit better to me. Probably we'll have a clearer idea of how it works out once they are online.

Chanak · Post by **Chanak** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 6:30 pm

As we all know, Hotmail is the instrument of Satan and therefore the root of all evil. Weasel has a hotmail address.

T'lainya · Post by **T'lainya** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 8:09 pm

What concerns me is it searches through your email to target the ads...

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 8:57 pm

Has to be a joke--the little slang things, the references to M&Ms, etc.

Bluestorm · Post by **Bluestorm** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 9:18 pm

Gmail name can't be used

I just heard that Google can't use the name Gmail as a company in London, England has the copyright to that name and thay want to keep it.
O well i'm sure they can think of other.

Any ideas

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 10:11 pm

Well if it isn't a hoax, a name change is not a bad thing.... When I first read "Gmail" my mind automatically went to 'Gstring'....

@T'L... yeah... that part *is* definitely worrying.... I first explored the story at work so I didn't read the fine print very closely. Hopefully, if the mail service is in fact real enough people will object to that particular component...

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 1:55 am

I have read nothing from Google to indicate this is a hoax btw.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswi ... 20652.html

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:35 am

I'm actually extremely surprised this wasn't an April Fool's Day joke. 1GB per person is a humongous amount of space and I can't see how it can be done, while keeping the service free. Ads don't really generate a lot of revenue... Heck, I can't even see how it can be done if it was payed!

I just heard that Google can't use the name Gmail as a company in London, England has the copyright to that name and thay want to keep it.
O well i'm sure they can think of other.
Can you send a link? I haven't heard of this particular story, and I'm trying to follow gMail news.

What concerns me is it searches through your email to target the ads...
How is that different than what Microsoft is doing in hotmail? How do you think aniti-spam measures take place? Every webmail service out there scans your emails for certain spam-key-words, the only thing google is doing differently is that they are also scanning in order to target ads. The concept is not innovative, google has been scanning web-pages (including message boards, I'd persume) in order to provide specific ads and I welcome this as google's ads are sometimes actually useful.

The only way you can make sure your emails aren't scanned is to use your ISP's email and set spam filters up yourself.

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 3:30 am

Originally posted by Vicsun
I'm actually extremely surprised this wasn't an April Fool's Day joke. 1GB per person is a humongous amount of space and I can't see how it can be done, while keeping the service free. Ads don't really generate a lot of revenue... Heck, I can't even see how it can be done if it was payed!
<snip>

Well - firstly, it will take a (very) long time before any ordinary user gets upwards to that amount, so storage can be added continuesly.
For instance, they can say that each user have 1GB of free space, but only allot for instance 10MB of physical storage, and when the 10 MB is getting close to full, they simply allot 10 more up to 1GB.
They don't need 1 GB of free space per (expected) user from start.
Say they get (low number, but just example) 50.000 users and they start by giving each user 10MB they only need 50.000 x 10 MB at start. When people start filling up their 10MB they simply add 10MB more to the users that are nearing their allotted space, and that way they build the users up to 1GB.

Also if they manage to keep spam-levels rather low (would imagine this is a high priority), then 1GB of "real" mails is rather a lot, and thus this will extend the timeframe before (m)any user gets even close to the 1GB limit. And I doubt most normal users would get close to this limit anyway in which case, it is mostly a marketing gimick

Secondly - I would also imagine there will be limitations of the size of individual files, so each mail can't exceed for instance 2-5 MB, to avoid the mail system to simply be used as extra storage for large files (ISO-files etc).

Thirdly - harddrive storage space is a cheap commodity these days. Harddrive storage becomes increasingly cheap (especially in wholesale) and fast, so the investment price, although still significant, isn't as terrefying as it would have been say 5 years ago.

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 4:59 am

You're right @ Xandax. After a bit of research I found that 1GB e-mail storage is already a reality. I just found the link and haven't looked into it indepth, but this definitely looks interesting. Free online data-storage, here I come.

T'lainya · Post by **T'lainya** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 3:36 pm

Vicsun, just my personal opinion but I find a difference between email searching through words I target and words of their choosing. I'd rather not receive ads based on a circulated joke or some piece of spam that slips through.

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:20 am

Originally posted by T'lainya
Vicsun, just my personal opinion but I find a difference between email searching through words I target and words of their choosing. I'd rather not receive ads based on a circulated joke or some piece of spam that slips through.

You wouldn't recive adds based on that either.
For such targetted advetising scanning to work, they will have to base it on numerous emails, otherwise it doesn't work. You can't make direct targetted marketing based on 1 email, but would need a higher frequency of the words - and this functionallity is very close to the functionallity of most of the "smart" spamfilters.

I don't think it is amoral or unethical that they scan your emails (as long as they aren't read). Countless things (can) scan your emails already such as spamfilter, "spamcops", anti-virus, anti-porn filters and so on.
The direct targeted adds are simply the price one has to pay for using the service of "free emails".
(Besides - I'd never used a webbased email-service for importent emails, they all have serious security issues.)

Bluestorm · Post by **Bluestorm** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 10:09 am

http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newsw ... 25818.html

HI. this is the page i found about the google gmail thing saving that they can't use it at this time...time will tell..

Bluestorm

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 10:16 am

Gmail has become a mounting concern with privacy advocates mainly because Gmail users would not be able to permanently delete e-mail messages sent to their account.

Okay, I have to admit... I feel this aspect is troubling... As attractive as I find much of their email concept, this in itself would stop me from using it. Part of it is privacy issues. It is also that I like to be able to keep my email organised, and not being able to permanently delete messages would be a pain in the arse..

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 12:25 pm

Well - there are elements of the Hotmail/MSN "Terms of Use" that I don't like either.
Just to mention some:

Microsoft may monitor your e-mail, or other electronic communications and may disclose such information in the event it has a good faith reason to believe it is necessary for purposes of ensuring your compliance with this Agreement, and protecting the rights, property, and interests of the Microsoft Parties or any customer of a Microsoft Party.

And this continues into the "MSN privacy statements"

At some sites, MSN collects personal information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address or telephone number. MSN may also collect demographic information, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests and favorites. Information collected by MSN may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies.

Sounds nice - huh?

Besides the "permanent deletion" thingy - I want to see a statement from Google as to why before passing judgement. In programming/software development most often nothing is "permanent" deleted (rather marked as deleted and hidden from the user), so I might take that statement a bit more liberal then others.

So far I've seen nothing out of the ordinary in this Google gmail that I wouldn't expect from them or any other "free" service on the Internet.

I think it would be naive to use such online services for personal and possible sensitive emails anyway, mostly because such services are to hackers/crackers/script-kiddies what sugar is to flys

.
While playing DAoC there were many many reports of hacked hotmail acccounts where hackers had accessed players game-account information and messed up their game-account. The same will happen with Googles mail-services.

edit: formatting.