InfoAve Premium E-Book Volume 6 is Available Now! New for 2009/2010!
Our brand new Cloudeight InfoAve Premium Volume 6 E-Book contains all the content of all 52 issues of InfoAve Premium from our sixth year of publication - from October 2008 to October 2009! InfoAve Premium Volume 6 E-Book is available as a download, on CD-ROM, or on USB Flash Drive! Have it your way - includes Windows 7 Tips/Tricks too! Get more information here - or get your copy of our biggest and best E-book ever -- here!

Dianne Read That Gmail Is Reading All Her Email!
Always happy to receive your great newsletter on Fridays. I appreciate the info on how to set up Gmail in OE. Didn't know I could do that. It's so much handier than having to go into Gmail. Anyway, having said that, the very next day I found this long article in a magazine saying that Google is reading all email and when email is sent or received a fresh column of ads appears on the right-hand side of the screen relevant to what you were talking about in your email. I tried it - yep, sure enough - I was talking about Honda's new car the Fit - and when I opened the email in Gmail, a column of ads appeared re Honda, etc. I tried it in OE, and this doesn't happen. The article is too long to email to you, but if you would like, I'd be happy to fax it to you. Sorry, I don't have a scanner. Maybe you can find it online. It was in Maclean's Magazine (Canada) in their August 28, 2006 issue. Anyway, you might have mentioned this before, but, if so, I missed it. Just wanted to pass it along for your comments. Thanks for the very time-consuming great work that you guys do!

Answer
First, let us say, we tried to find the article in question on the Web, and came up empty. Apparently you have to be a subscriber to read the article -but we didn't see any "archived" articles to read. So we're not subscribers :). So we're basing this answer solely on what you've told us and extrapolated from there. If indeed the writing was accusing Google of "reading" your private email, then this is our answer:

OK. We're going to expose the truth now - this is the inside scoop - you read it here first! Google employs about 300 million people - all very small people - who sit in a big room about the size of the state of Vermont. They eat, sleep, and live there. It's a very grueling job. Their job is to read every email that comes through Gmail and stick advertisements in it that have something to do with what you're writing about. In other words, if you're writing about bass fishing, you might see advertisements for frying pans, lures or "bass" guitars. :-)

Seriously, it's a shame with all the really nasty stuff floating around on the Internet, magazine writers find the time and the need to write about something like Google reading people's email. If these writer's weren't out for sensationalism (now apparently necessary to "sell" magazines) they could spend their time more fruitfully and expose real security threats and cover real issues (like Zango).

Google is getting to be the next Microsoft: A target. People just cannot stand success. There's always a gut-feeling (some people have) that in order to be successful someone or some company must either have cheated to be successful or is doing something sneaky and untoward to remain successful. It's just such a shame that people with only a scant knowledge of what they are talking about, write articles that then take on the aura of credibility simply because they appear in a credible publication. Being at the top of anything, means you have a target painted on your back. We'll tell you right now that Google has one big target painted on its back - they're beginning to feel like Microsoft must feel. There's suspicion galore where Google's concerned.

Our opinion is that Google, so far, has done an exemplary job of protecting users privacy while becoming, without doubt, the mother of all search engines (sorry mamma.com). Google could have gone the way of Ask.com (Formerly, the now forlorn and abandoned Ask Jeeves) and allow its subsidiaries to continue to pawn and spawn questionable software and questionable practices (Iwon.com, MyWay.com, FunWebProducts, SmileyCentral, MyWay Toolbar, etc.) in order to increase its bottom line and keep stockholders grinning. But, we see no signs that any of Google's practices or software is going in that direction. And they'd be in a position right now to do just that, if increasing their already handsome bottom line was their only consideration. But they're balancing their growth with conscience - or they appear to be anyway. And we think that Google needs to be commended not condemned. That's just our opinion, you can take it for what it's worth.

Despite the 300 million small people Google employs - hmmm - they don't read your email. They use a technology they developed to scan your email for what are known as "keywords". If you write to someone about a Honda Fit, it may find the words, Honda, car, Fit, and extrapolate that the content discusses cars, Hondas, and the Honda Fit and display ads related to the content of your email. It doesn't mean they're reading your email. No one is sitting there going through your email and saying: "Hey Al, send me that Honda ad, I have a live one here!". Google does the same with Web pages - for instance - if you read "Losing Weight Is Easy" the Google ads displayed relate to diet and weight loss. There are millions of Web pages with Google ads on them. No one is manually reading each Web page and then placing ads in it. The same is true with Gmail.

If Google was doing this on your computer, using your resources, and connecting to your computer to display these ads in your email program or in a program interface, it would be adware. But when it's done completely from their servers it's not. When you see their ads you're on their site: their private property. They're using their own resources to display the ads. They own the servers. But, you own your computer. It's wrong for any company to display ads on your computer based on the content you view - and use your resources to do it - because it's your private property; your turf. When you go to Gmail and check your email, you're a guest on their computer and in order to use their service you agree to abide by their terms. And you've agreed to allow them to show you ads while you read and browse your email. And, when you send an email from Gmail on the Web, it doesn't place ads in the email you send, so your recipient gets only your email, no ads. That sounds pretty fair to us. Both Hotmail and Yahoo insert an advertisement at the bottom of every email you send using their services; your recipient sees these ads. But, in fairness to Hotmail and Yahoo these ads are merely ads for their mail services and not related to any content contained in your private email.

If you set up Gmail in Outlook Express, you won't see any advertisements at all. None. It will work and look just like your ISP email account. You won't see an ad and your recipient won't see an advertisement either. Hotmail and Yahoo both charge a monthly free for this service. If the ads that Google displays when you read your email on their site allow you to set up your Gmail account in Outlook Express which you can then use to send and receive ad-free email, then I think it's a pretty good deal. If Google, however, were to start putting contextual ads in your private mail sent by Outlook Express, that would be another thing altogether - we would be jumping all over them (not that they'd care, mind you) if they ever did something like that. That kind of thing would smack of adware or worse. We cannot imagine Google ever doing this.

There are a lot of people writing technical articles about the Internet and computers that don't very much about either; so be careful about jumping to conclusions or forming an opinion based on one writer's article which may or may not be written by someone who knows what he or she is talking about and which may based solely on supposition and not substance.

We hope this is what you wanted to know :)

InfoAve Premium E-Book Volume 6 is Available Now! Includes Windows 7 Tips!
Our brand new Cloudeight InfoAve Premium Volume 6 E-Book contains all the content of all 52 issues of InfoAve Premium from our sixth year of publication - from October 2008 to October 2009! InfoAve Premium Volume 6 E-Book is available as a download, on CD-ROM, or on USB Flash Drive! Have it your way...get more information here - or get your copy of our biggest and best E-book ever -- here!