New Gmail Policy Statements

[Brett_Tabke]

[gmail.google.com...]

Several new enhancements include :

sending emails to users who have requested to be removed from a mailing list
selling, exchanging or distributing to a third party the email addresses of any person without such person's knowing and continued consent to such disclosure
sending unsolicited emails to significant numbers of email addresses belonging to individuals and/or entities with whom you have no preexisting relationship

Sell, trade, resell or otherwise exploit for any unauthorized commercial purpose or transfer any Gmail account

[jbarr]

Considering the nature of this forum, I would suggest that others pay close attention to the FORMAT of the policy (not necessarily the content.) Gmail gives the user a link to "View Changes" that displays the entire policy with all changes in context. From a user's perspective, this is a huge boon. How many times have you been notified that there are policy changes, then to be confronted with a multi-page document with no reference to just what has been changed?

This is just another example of Google's typically excellent "user-friendliness" that far surpasses most other companies.

[Namaste]

I can't see the "View Changes"

[edit_g]

I like the view changes as well, they do this on their general privacy policy as well. Not to mention a few more content laden pages... :)

[ukgimp]

>>Sell, trade, resell or otherwise exploit for any
>>unauthorized commercial purpose or transfer any Gmail >>accoun

Will they come after you, right after they have stopped lin selling based on PR :)

[Teknorat]

"1986 items found for gmail"

I wonder will eBay stop these auctions? If they do it will make accounts harder to come by thus creating more demand and... oh! What's this? Google comes out well and truly on top again! Heh.

[ByronM]

"1986 items found for gmail"

I wonder will eBay stop these auctions? If they do it will make accounts harder to come by thus creating more demand and... oh! What's this? Google comes out well and truly on top again! Heh.

By reading the terms of service it is only valid for accounts. I don't see anything restricting the sales of "invites" as they're technically an invitation and NOT a physical account until the user signs up and creates the account.

[ILuvSrchEngines]

Google is dead, why do people think otherwise? It doesn't matter how much backtracking G does now or ever with Gmail, the common guys on the street will only remember the bad PR. No need to change from Yahoo email now either.

[percentages]

>Google is dead, why do people think otherwise?

I don't! But, in reality I will be retired before it happens and won't get to relish in the gory glory of the prediction.

For those that plan on hanging around another 5 to 10 years, it is a safe bet!

[celerityfm]

Google is dead, why do people think otherwise? It doesn't matter how much backtracking G does now or ever with Gmail, the common guys on the street will only remember the bad PR. No need to change from Yahoo email now either.

Hmm I don't think so. The demand for gmail invites was so high that I got a used superbowl ticket for my favorite team (Bucs!), an autographed CD for one of my favorite drummers (Chris Vrenna) and a bunch of other fun little things like that before the number of people with gmail accounts grew so high that the value of a gmail invite has shrunk considerably. However. Every single time I have invites I never fail to find someone who wants one. Especially now that Google has banned the sale of gmail accounts or invites-[news.com.com ].

Course, half the draw to gmail right now is the fact that only people who have been invited can join, people want to be on *the inside*. Google knows this and man have they ever exploited it in order to promote gmail. But its worked, very well in fact. But the point is I don't think gmail is dead.

Also I love gmails threading feature and search functions which you won't find in hotmail or yahoo mail. I really could care less that an automated system is reading my emails, its not like my ISP doesn't have an automated system that reads all my emails to scan if they are spam or not.

(PS if I had any invites I'd post them).

[coconubuck]

I dont think they even exploited the fact that you have to be an "insider" to get an invite. They let everyone else take care of the exploiting for them, and honestly, it's the best way they could have handled it.

[freeflight2]

Gmail gives the user a link to "View Changes" that displays the entire policy with all changes in context. From a user's perspective, this is a huge boon.

totally agree - I always wondered why there is no law to force all companies to do this. Every company should be required to: a.) display the most current TOS and b.) list all changes ever made to the TOS and when there where made.

[grelmar]

I've had a couple dozen invites to give away, I made one post about it a month or so ago on another forum, and I still keep getting requests for them.

The demand is still high, Google may be dead in the not too distant future, but it is certainly alive and well now.

As for all the bad PR, well, only the geeks paid much attention to it in the first place.

And yes, I have been very impressed with G's "transparency" when it comes to policy changes and notifying users exactly what they can and can't expect about privacy, etc etc.

[celerityfm]

coconubuck, yes but my point is that was the plan from the very beginning for them. Any when I said *they* were exploiting it I'm meaning that they could probably open it up to the public now (judging by how they are giving away so many invites now), but they know the best way to keep interest in it, at this point, is to keep it in "members only club mode".

Anyways as far as ISPs reading your email, apparently its legal for any ISP to read your email, even with human eyes [story.news.yahoo.com ] (believe it or not that story and court case are not related to gmail), so people who are worried about gmail using a computer to read the email should be just as worried that the sysadmin of their favorite ISP is reading their email, atleast at this point.

In any case, I'm loving gmail, what more can I say.

[rfgdxm1]

The first change Brett mentioned is just standard boilerplate saying you can't spam. As for selling gmail accounts, little Google can do unless you do so in a very public manner. Just hand over the account and password, and the new owner can change the password.

[Teknorat]

I've run out of people to give all my invites to.

[gmail.google.com...]

Enjoy whoever clicks it first.

[anallawalla]

To the last poster - you might want to get a mod to edit your link - it reveals the email address that was created.

No, I don't need an invite.

[Harry]

I have a question.

I was invited directly by Googgle. It took me two weeks before I bothered registering. I had no idea people desired these. Does that mean that I'm special? :)