Google competing with microsoft

ProWebUK

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Well.... not really competing with microsoft, rather competing with Hotmail, is this another hint of google putting MS as an overall system down?

I think everyone will agree without argument that google is by far the leading search engine out there........ but it certainly seems to be siding with linux over windows.... previously a devoted linux search (google.com/linux) now trying to get past probably the largest free email site in existence (At least in my opinion)

The announcement was around 18 hours ago I believe, all the news here

http://news.google.co.uk/news?q=hotmail&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=nn

also, google are recruiting and, well, as it says, its out of this world :) Take a read... http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html

Lots of fun for google lately it seems :)

Chris
 
A quote, very very interesting..

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer recently admitted that the software firm had made a mistake in not launching its own search engine. He said the group was investing in a service that he promised would be "absolutely the best".

Even if Microsoft is not googles target here, Microsoft thinks it is from the look on that, its fighting back no matter what... I think they have little chance on matching google now though, google have huge funding also... MS Hotmail and yahoo have lots and lots of competition here it seems :)

The difference made clear on the advancement google is making:

MSN offers a free 2MB of storage and charges $59.95 a year for 100MB. Yahoo! makes 4MB available free and charges $49.79 a year for 100MB.

Google exceeds the preimum options of both Yahoo and Hotmail by around 10x, for free - thats $50 cheaper and you get 10x more...

The only downside to the GMail over the premium services offered by the others, is that there will be TARGETED advertising related to the emails content, i'm sure google will offer a premium that again exceeds both yahoo and hotmail by far to cover that also!

Chris
 
Hotmail is crap and has been ever since Microsoft purchased them. Google is much like Apple in that they invent. I am glad that all the rumors for the last year finally came true.
 
Will you be glad when you read Google's privacy info for the new Gmail service?

First read 'Google covets your email address':

http://www.google-watch.org/email.html

This page is not meant to be an analysis of Gmail, but while you are at it, please read the privacy page and the terms-of-service page for Gmail. Note that if you delete an email, Google may mark it so that it is invisible to you, but might not really delete it. And if you terminate your account, Google does not guarantee that they will erase your emails. Google decides what to delete and when, not you. It's none of your business.

While Google brags that no humans will read your emails, the entire Gmail program will involve extensive automated profiling of you as an individual. Google will be sharing the non-identifiable portions of your profile with anyone they choose. If the ownership of Google changes, or there is a merger, the entire personally-identifiable profile will be available to the new owners or partners.

Finally, it's all available to government officials all over the world, under whatever legal procedures are used in any particular jurisdiction. It is also available to civil litigants under discovery procedures authorized by a court. When you look at it this way, the one-gigabyte allowance for your email account becomes much less attractive.

Google never deletes anything they collect, as far as we can tell. Think twice before typing in your email address on a Google form.

Of course what you do is entirely up-to-you; I'm considering keeping my mailing lists (or at least a year or so worth of them at a time, since that's what it'll take to fill a gigabyte); that way I can use Google search facilities to search my own mailing list archive.

Jeff
 
They can go through your emails, BUT, if you put it from another perspective:

Would you go sieving through 1 million+ accounts each containing up to 1GB of emails?

I dislike going through full hotmail accounts, finding it very uncomfortable to have 6 pages of mixed spam and valid emails for MYSELF. Having to do that for 1m+ other people..... would you do it? I certainly wouldn't, not even for one.

And from again, another perspective:

Would you keep backups of every email on your system at any specified time to use it later on... doubtful, especially for anything more than backups that you will never look at or use unless you are restoring the data.

As much as google are a large company (they are certainly not small anymore!), I think the 1GB allowed space is a very high limit to be put out? ever seen 1GB space for free before? Now, put that information into good thinking and you end up with a simple end:

If what google-watch have said there, is correct, google will require "unlimited" space, else the statement is incorrect and the idea will fail anyway... wondering how?

1GB mailbox
1) Fill the mailbox (1gb usage)
2) Delete all emails (1GB deleted)

If google store all erased messages, they have now used 2GB of storage on a 1GB account, fill the mailbox a couple of times and then delete all messages and each time google needs an extra GB space for your account alone...

Google has money, but do they have money to buy all of us 60GB hard drives on their server in exchange of some related adveriting text at the bottom of outgoing mail, do they also have the money and facilities to employ thousands (maybe millions?) of staff to spend their days reading through deleted emails

Based on those couple of points, i consider the google-watch statements to be the most invalid, worthless arguments I have seen in a long time.

Chris
 
We disagree.

Google has the wherewithall to store as much data as it wants. They don't store data on 60 G, on 120 G or even on 240 G drives. They store data on multi-TB NAS systems.

And since you point out you don't like the spam in hotmail accounts, how do you think you'll like targeted spam, based on the subject of the particular email you're viewing, each time you look at one of your emails.

Just think, one of your friends invites you to the lake, and you'll see three or four adverts poping up telling you about likefront motels, lakefront restaurants, lakefront rentals and properties. Ugh.

And each time you look at an email, even years later, you'll see new ads, that some computer at Google thinks is relevant. Double-Ugh.

You miss my point, and Google-watch's points completely, as far as privacy is concerned.

No, I don't think anyone at Google is going to look through all those TBs of my email. What I do think is that Google is a search company, and according to their own privacy policy, they're going to keep all the emails you ever get and send, forever. Is there anything to stop them from changing their privacy policy so they can put them into public searches later? Do you trust Google? Do you trust anyone who might buy them?

Do you trust your government? Or any other government? Anyone can (and many people will) get civil or criminal court orders to search those databases, once they exist.

Have you ever gotten a piece of porn spam? I bet you have. But you've probably erased it form your inbox, or at least from any part of it your spouse can see. But what if from now on whenever you try to delete a piece of porn spam it goes into a special directory that says, in effect "stuff you deleted". And then later, someone (perhaps your spouse's divorce attorney, though of course I hope it never happens to you) decides to get a court order to look at all the "stuff you deleted" to prove to a court that you weren't effective in your marriage because you got porn. Could you prove you got it as spam? Would you want to go through the trouble?

No, I think if Gmail is for real, and if it succeeds, it'll be one of the worse things to invade privacy that's ever happened on the face of the earth.

I almost think reasonable governments need to legislate against this sort of thing, but of course there are two things wrong with that argument:

1) There's no such thing as a reasonable governemnt.

2) Most governments will love the idea that such a database exists, because once it exists they can get a court order to search it.

George Orwell was right; he was just twenty years late.

Jeff

Jeff
 
jlasman said:
Google has the wherewithall to store as much data as it wants. They don't store data on 60 G, on 120 G or even on 240 G drives. They store data on multi-TB NAS systems.

Either way - can they afford to have TB's of each single users account - people who want to can fill up a 1gb of email in a few seconds with false email through a script or such... delete the entire folder and your filling googles storage rapidly.

Google are a large company, but not a fraction of the size microsoft are... im sure microsoft will refuse to match the 1gb mark even , without keeping constant backups of every accounts deleted email, why? - I dont know, but surely its a huge financial drain.

jlasman said:
And since you point out you don't like the spam in hotmail accounts, how do you think you'll like targeted spam, based on the subject of the particular email you're viewing, each time you look at one of your emails.

Your going in the wrong direction here. Google have said they will have very advanced spam filters included to stop SPAM email, what they are doing to "fund" the system is have simple text based ads (like hotmail has) with the only difference being, google will have the advertisements based on the emails content so its related to what your discussing in the email...

Google have said it will be very similar to the advertisements you see on the right of the page on the current search system.

What I meant with hotmail, is quite literally, 80% of your inbox ends up with email that are "real" spam - that being an email from an unknown sender with totally unrelated to anything of...

There is a clear difference between the two.

jlasman said:
Just think, one of your friends invites you to the lake, and you'll see three or four adverts poping up telling you about likefront motels, lakefront restaurants, lakefront rentals and properties. Ugh.

Since neither of us know how many advertisments will get posted there, I think its better not to give numbers on advertisements! anyway, looking at google search for "lake" and "lakefront" shows little about anything you reffered to, and since its related possibly the only thing that would be advertisied is:

Enjoy Britain's waterways!
Explore Lake X with our comprehensive guide at Waterscape

I could put up with that... if you wanted to know about the particular lake you have reference there, if you know about it already, its just an advertisement, no worse than what hotmail has and it can be ignored.

Now, you compare google and hotmail

Google email regarding lakes, you get:
Brief advertisement relating to lakes in general and laxe X

Hotmail you get:
Brief advertisement regarding any random thing which is more than likely of no interest to any reader at all...

The better for you is?
The better from the companys view is?

In my opinion, google is the answer for both.

Privacy is important, but I dont think google would or could beyond a certain extent.

Chris
 
Google may have problems with the new service under European privacy laws, which are much more developed than those in the U.S.

But I'm not really interested in getting an email from Phyllis telling me the memorial service for her mom is this afternoon at 3:00, along with an advert for how I can save buying a pre-need casket from casketsRus.

No, I'll leave it.

I've already written an exim acl that will send back a nice email to anyone who writes me from a gmail account, explaining politely that I'll never write anything to a gmail account; that if they need or want to correspond with me, they'll have to do it from some other email address.

The only thing that's keeping me from putting it into service yet, is I'm not sure what to use as the gmail identifier. But I'll find out, and I will put it into service.

The danger in giving that much power to one company is just too great.

Jeff
 
Firstly, i'm sure google understand privacy laws and didnt just think it up whilst typing it, if it is against any privacy laws im sure one of the 1+ million+ users who use google every day and have seen GMail will take the action that is required, if that doesn't happen its more than likely within any restrictions.

Im going to leave the debate at this point, my opinions have pretty much been said and any further on this in the same argument would result in repeated statements I think...:D

Out of curiosity, are these rules what you intend on releasing here for exim?

Chris
 
The rules I'm releasing to DA for Exim only add the use blocklists, and perhaps a few other carefuly documented spam-stopping measures (I haven't made the final cut but probably will today).

The rules I'm using for my ReallyStopSpam service will be similar, but perhaps a bit more refined.

I'd never make such a decision for other users as I've made for myself regarding mail to and from Gmail. In fact if you read my pertinent post again you'll see I wrote "if they need or want to correspond with me"; the ACL (which isn't working yet :( ) will, as do my other rules, work for specific local-part/domain combinations which must appear in a file; so far my email addresses are the only ones in the file.

Jeff
 
I do not think I will be signing up with Gmail just because it's the new fad. Besides, I already have damn near unlimited email storage on my own server and I don't have to worry about Google's TOS :cool:
 
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