Curiosity

[lnr]

[Poll #872554]

Feel free to answer anonymously in comments if you don't have a livejournal, or don't want me to know your answers. I don't log IPs.

Comments

[naath.livejournal.com]

gmail is probably evil, but it is also sufficiently usefull that I use it, but not for things that I don't want google to know about.

[aldabra]

I use it. If I had infinite amounts of spare headspace I'd use something else, but I don't and it's a very very long way down my list of things I want to think about. (Chiark turned elm off when I was still in Bristol and operating on negative headspace and no sleep, and I couldn't handle anything more complicated than point-and-click as a replacement.)

I find the ads not at all annoying and very occasionally useful; I don't begrudge them automated content scanning for ad-targeting purposes.

I have been worried about the Evil Republicans buying them out and having access to my whole life, and I don't like not being able to take a backup of my old mail and put it elsewhere, and every now and then my dangerously-big-company detectors go PING. But on the whole I prefer carefully targetted ads to carpet-bombing, and discreet ads to obtrusive ads, and services that are paid for by big business to services I'm priced out of. And Google Earth is seriously nifty.

So yes, I understand the objections and I have e-mail addresses elsewhere for people (or subjects) who aren't compatible with gmail, but I'm a reasonably satisfied customer.

[pir.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm probably somewhat biased but I do know a bunch of the developers and the policies behind it and I see no evil (even without hands over my eyes).

I don't use it much, though, since I'm a geek who isn't fond of webmail and I run my own mailservers anyway.

[knell.livejournal.com]

Seconded, and bias duly declared here too. I think I wrote a lengthy blog entry about this (it predates my employment by the Goog) a couple of years ago..

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I think it's a bit unfortunate that lnr has put up this poll without any indication of _why_ people might think Gmail's evil and not want to use it.

It's apparent that the average Gmail user just doesn't know, for example, that the T&Cs say they'll give all your email to the Chinese government if the Chinese ask nicely.

[pir.livejournal.com]

The company, as any other, has to abide by the laws in all the countries it operates in...

[damerell.livejournal.com]

That would certainly be a reason to keep your email somewhere with no presence in China, yes... and they don't _even say_ "in accordance with the law". "Ask nicely" is a pretty accurate summary.

[pir.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for policy but I'd suggest looking at what various free mail and websearch companies have done in practice when asked for things by governments, which ones have given up informationand which ones have fought it in the courts.

Personally the US government concerns me more than China.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Not to just C&P the gmail rant, but "Note that the much-publicised recent case of Google fighting a US government request for web search data seems to me to be a case of Google wanting to avoid the government getting Google's core business products for free via subpoena, rather than a case where Google was motivated by privacy concerns."

If Google will only comply with explicit legal requirements, the T&Cs should say so.

The US worries me too, but then I don't keep my email in the US either, and there isn't so obvious a case of Google doing whatever the US government wants as there is with China.

[pir.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I can't (not won't, can't) speak for company policy *shrug*

[lnr]

Well mostly it's because I was actually curious what people think *now* rather than what they might think if told more things.

[reddragdiva]

Checking the other place, I think we may just become enlightened.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's evil. But I do use envelopes! INCONSISTANT! I am teh evilxx0r!!

please unsubscibe me from cambridge 8-)

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Cambridge is like certain licence agreements, you've lived there so you can never opt out.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

You mean we can't just shake the dust from our feet, and the memes from our brains?

Shit.

[vatine]

I can see that people want to use it, but on the whole, I perfer not sending email to Gmail (I will, however, in those circumstances it makes life sufficiently easier). I try REAL HARD to not send anything I consider "private" or "sensitive" to a Gmail account and would prefer if people NOT forwarded any non-gmail mail to gmail, so I can make an educated guess as to what is and isn't Gmail-enabled.

[artela.livejournal.com]

That would be tricky in my case - my *only* non-work email is gmail, and all aliased email addresses get sent there so that I can actually read them :-)

[simont]

I left the first of those blank for "er, not sure, somewhere in between".

[sparrowsion]

I left the first two blank for about this reason. I originally left the last blank as well, because I was confused. In fact, I'm still confused. I don't see what this form gains over a single four-radio-button question.

[lnr]

Well, if I'd done it that way there wouldn't be a way for Simon to express his inability to answer the first but still answer the rest. And it's useful to know that there are people who answer "no" to all of the above but still don't do Gmail themselves, which you wouldn't be able to tell either.

Mostly it's just a side effect of being thrown together quite quickly though, rather than being a carefully thought through survey.

[lnr]

Oh and I expected people who agreed with the first would also agree with the second, so it would have wanted tickyboxes.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

If you're really that bothered, you can use Freenigma (http://www.freenigma.com/) with it.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

It's got a great spam filter. I forward my old non-sauced address there.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

I'm total agnostic. Gmail has, at best, no impact on any part of my life.
Is there any reason I should consider Gmail evil?
Can anyone enlighten me?

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Because they use it to target advertising, and admit to this.

Unlike other web mail services that do this and don't admit it, or just scattershot.

TBH if I were worried about what could be done with my email I'd encrypt everying, who knows what those intermediate MTAs might get up to, and none of them send me a EULA before forwarding my stuff.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Oh. Right. Thanks.

I'm still agnostic, then, as I can't really see a problem, as long as they are open about it. I might not chose to use it, but that doesn't make it evil.

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Some fear that their privacy policy is such that they could easily do rather more than targeting advertising if they so chose. (I've not read it myself and IANAL.)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I use it a lot (my non-gmail addresses are currently forwarded there, after a laptop crisis that took out my normal mail reader and archives, and a few weeks of swapping machines/HDDs). The advertising to date has divided neatly into "ooh, that's actually quite interesting", "ha ha, that's really funny" and "was there advertising? I didn't notice". I haven't bought anything from it, but then I never do when I use Google either. I have followed some links to interesting news stories, though.

[emperor]

I have a gmail account which I don't use, because I think it's pretty "evil". I wanted an intermediate option for the middle two questions - I'd rather not email people at gmail, and would rather they didn't email me from there.

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

I have a gmail account, and find it useful. I've found no reason to consider it Evil.

It's also now my only non-work email address.

[angua.livejournal.com]

I mostly use gmail nowadays as custard is far too full of spam to really use efficiently and I rarely check it.

If people don't want to mail me at gmail then that's their problem not mine.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

I divide my life up into (a) things I don't mind everyone knowing (b) things I don't mind most people knowing (c) things only trusted people get told. [c.f. (a) things I will post unlocked to LJ (b) things I will post locked to LJ (c) things I won't post to LJ at all.]

(a) and bits of (b) I'd prefer not to send to gmail but will if necessary. Since these days you can't tell which otherwise sane people are forwarding all their mail to gmail, the rest of (b) and (c) go only to people I know aren't using it.

I don't think I'm being paranoid; my paranoia levels have always served me well in the past and turned out to be appropriate and justified often enough. (c) is sensitive stuff; as with sending love-letters, I'd rather I could trust the postal staff to be friendly, discreet and trustworthy as well as the recipient.

I keep my personal correspondence only on systems where I know and trust the sysadmins. Frankly it astounds me how few people go squick at the thought of someone unknown/untrustable reading all their email.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

I have a gmail account, but then again I have many e-mail accounts, most of which are dormant and/or moribund. Be that as it may, even if Google are more ethical than most Big Corporations regarding direct marketing, they still reserve the right to spam and flog my data to all-comers - and that is why my primary e-mail access is now administered by The Penguin formerly of your parish rather than Google or any other Big Corporation.

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

You didn't leave any room for people with weak opinions, like "I'll still use it, but it worries me".

I do have a gmail account, but I don't actually use it. This is for a combination of factors, like mild unreliability, I *like* unix mail clients, worry about privacy, etc.

[reddragdiva]

I use my Gmail account for everything because everything else is a PITA. Gmail is a nicer and more usable email client for me than Thunderbird, which surprised me.

I have sometimes considered registering daniel-brandt-is-too-creepy.com.

[kake]

I wish I could remember why I've got a gmail account. It's probably something to do with helping someone else figure out how to use it. I think I have it forwarding to Real Email.

[pm215]

My gmail account is solely for corresponding with people that SAUCE doesn't like (generally people with hotmail accounts, and occasional things like ebay transactions where I don't want to risk the seller turning out to have a hotmail address).

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I have no objection to Google or its advertising, but I feel that any company who could deny me access to my past archive of e-mails is potentially more evil (even though, quite probably, not even slightly evil in practice) than I feel comfortable using their service.

If my ISP decide that I am abusing the service then they can stop me using their service, but they can't split me from my knowledge base of past e-mails sent and received - or my back-ups. (In truth, if GMail were to let me take offline backups, which could be used completely independently of Google, and if they were to let me import nine years' worth of past mail, then I would probably shift my activity over there.)