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Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately, due to potential privacy and confidentiallity considerations, we are not accepting inbound email from Google's Gmail service. In order for us to respond to your email, you will need to resend it from a different email account.
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I am aware of the current privacy backlash (silly in my opinion), but in my opinion, regardless of the email providers Terms and Conditions, the biggest threat to the privacy of the person's reply is the person they send it to - not the provider.
Someone so paranoid about privacy should really require recipients of their emails to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
If they boycott, the rest may follow.
Is the WSJ going to send news alerts to something that is going to advertise competitive services?
One: I am not advertising my competitors when I have a captive audience interested in my products.
At first I agreed with this, but the more I thought about it as a surfer/customer, I laughed. It's a bit arrogant to believe that a business that lives off the Internet has a captive audience. Chances are that your customer already saw a similar ad to what they will be served up via gmail in the process of finding your Google listing or ad.
"Thanks for your order, and please accept our deepest sympathies for the loss of your $79.95."
LOL. Thanks for the laugh.
How about robertskelton tells us who he sent this email to?
This is a post by a random new user and is now on the front page. Is WebmasterWorld trying to foment dissent?
Rush to judgment if you will
I think I will wait until
I can make up my own mind
Time to logoff and unwind
I know they're stored by other ISPs etc., it's not paranoia - what's wrong with commonsense, and, perhaps, a degree of indignation?
Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but it's to do with politeness and decency. For example, I never open my wifes postal mail - even if I can see it's just junk mail.
And 'Reply to' messages from non-GMail users to GMail users are likely to end up being stored by Google, to be searched, analysed, cached etc., all contributing to their own commercial ends.
I'm not against G making a bob or two, I just wish they'd be a little less aggressive about it.
A further thought - I get dozens of spam porn e-mails every day. If G's spam filters can't remove them, as a user of GMail, will I suffer the double whammy of porn spam, plus porn Ads supplied by Google, based on my 'preferences'?
It hasn't been thought out properly.
A bit off topic - for those who block yahoo email.
Yahoo is the biggest internet provider in Japan - more than 5 million subscribers, and default email they provide to subscribers is @yahoo.co.jp so you may be blocking "legitimate" users.
I understand your point, but for what I am with, the faker and throwaway address is far too big a problem than to worry about the apoparent loss of millions using such throwaway addresses.
For the site I deal with, when the email listserv sign-up script refuses a new attempted sign-up due to the address being a yahoo address, the script displays a webpage explaining that they need to prove that they are "real" with a "real" address from either their own domain or ISP (except AOL, which is also banned). The script also then recommends a link which will sell them a premium email address, if they don't want to to provide some other "real" address.
So, I really could care less how many millions use throwaway addresses. If they want something "real" from services, they have to BE "real" and use a "real" email address. What I have found is that, for the most part, the genuinely real people completely understand and they simply provide a "real" address in their follow-up attempt to sign up. Simple.
...to worry about the apoparent loss of millions using such throwaway addresses.
...with a "real" address from either their own domain or ISP...
For me, the issue lies in the Y brand for email, just like M$N's HM brand, and like AOL most especially.
For example, AOL spams my postmail box with CDs junkmail and that it has the audacity to try to change the email rules of the internet by denying their customers from receiving emails from 1000s of web-sites because the sites do not realize it or choose to the make changes AOL tries to impose. AOL does not own the internet. (G should learn from this AOL mistake regarding G's imposing its own internet rules for SEO, too!) So, any of their AOL customers will simply not be allowed any access to our email services because AOL robs them from receiving emails.
Back to Y... people simply have to use another address. Y has chosen to let its brand be associated with that and so that's the price Y and Y email users has to pay, that sites like mine will no longer accept it as "real" email.
But thanks again for trying to be helpful.
Exactly. Why on earth would you want to send business email into a system where the operator of that system has stated up front theat they intend to read your email and then display ads that match the content?
I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry... I've kept quiet on this, but I guess I can't anymore. This creates a horrible world of unintended (or "what do I care as a profit maximizing agent?") consequences.
Usually, I know I don't need to read an email with VViDGET*S (widgets) in the subject line. Or C1alis, or v1agra, or Vi_agra. You get the point...
Now... if gmail takes off... people with legit emails will be doing the same rediculous cr4p. lol... they won't just have to do it in the subject line... they'll have to do it throughout the whole message!
If gmail sets this program up and it works, so do the rest of the free email providers. (a point made several times, but I thought I should repeat it.)
4fter th4at, w*e c4n a11 look forvv4ard t0 s!lly ema1l that need_s to be par5ed b-4 it make5 5en5e.
This, as a business model, will turn legit emailers into idiots. Or good legit emailers into idiots, and regular emailers into suckers. I'm not sure which.
By "emailers," I mean regular people in the course of their business avoiding email ads... not spammers, bulkers, etc.
Personally, I don't want a climate where I feel I better read an email that says VV1DG3T. People will do it to avoid the gmail and other freemail ads if google takes off with this. After that, all email is spam to me.
For those of you who say "you don't have to use it," maybe you should think about the internet world it leads to before deciding how you feel about it.
You should also whack them with a cluestick if they aren't blocking all web based e-mail providers. Yahoo admins could trivially read any e-mails that are not encypted on their servers. And if they are paranoid about privacy, then why the heck aren't they requiring use of PGP?
At first I agreed with this, but the more I thought about it as a surfer/customer, I laughed. It's a bit arrogant to believe that a business that lives off the Internet has a captive audience. Chances are that your customer already saw a similar ad to what they will be served up via gmail in the process of finding your Google listing or ad.
It is possible to have a captive audience. One situation which happens to me every day is an email is sent to me "Do you supply the? widget". I do, so I respond. The customer probably could not find it elsewhere on the internet wihin the UK so they approached me. So I send back a nice response with prices and availability and suddenly I could find that because the customers search skills were poor and couldn't find it elsewhere, Google will have found it elsewhere via AdWords and now advertise to my potential customer the same product from other companies! And they make money from this!
The next thing that will happen is when you search from Google, your webpage will be put into a frame with AdWords on the right-hand side, relevant to your page. Is this any different? And how similar is this to Gator, WhenU and other 'scumware' programs? It is a very fine line that Google are treading.
Google is not your or my "friendly pal", Google is a commercial profit making company the same as any other before or since.
Presently Google are trying to implement a way to make a greater profit from your and my use of person to person email which we use for our *non public* private and business interests than they could by simply charging a straight price for it in the simplest way.
The privacy implications are an important aspect of this - but worse is the assumption that we will simply not mind their snooping though email sent from and or to Gmail accounts for the sake of their increasing their profits at the expense of the very meaning of our *non public* communication.
And is it true that they intend to retain our data after the user has deleted it or not? anyhow until it has been deleted by the user it will be being scanned repeatedly to serve recently paid for ads on re accessing the data .. well if the search side is anything to go by it is certainly likely to be being cached also .. troublesome enough on the search side .. significantly more so where non public email is concerned.
So no treading a fine line they are not.
Blinded by the dollar signs they certainly seem to be.
Lets not be naive people, a significant profit making company wants to make greater profits by using the contents of our non public online communications wherever and however it can get its hands on them and the effect of this is likely in many cases to reduce the effectiveness of our communications themselves.
>The next thing that will happen is when you search from Google, your webpage will be put into a frame with AdWords on the right-hand side, relevant to your page.
A large well known business directory already does this with to sites that paid a flat fee for inclusion. Im sure Google has already debated the merits of this strategy. Even they have to know the outcry would be deafening.
I think a large part of this has to do with the type of businesses you intereact with. If you are primarily b2b then I can see the concern with free e-mail accounts. But b2c businesses have to realize that as a consumer of your products I don't want ANY follow up ads specials or deals cluttering up my inbox so it is easier to use a free account than a "real" account I use with a domain I own.
Besides, do you expect every consumer to have their own domain and "real" e-mail address? If any of you have worked in IT support for any length of time you know the chances of that happening are slim to none.
Just as you don't want our addresses cluttering up your lists we don't want your promotions cluttering up our accounts (perhaps this is a happy end result for some). Unless it is something I really want I will move on elsewhere if I can't use my "throw away" account. If you don't want my business, if my dollars don't spend then I don't want to give them to you. I don't mean this in a mean spirited way but rather offer it as perspective from the other side of this argument. Rarely in the consumer market is one business so unique that I can't find a competitor offering the same services for nearly the same cost.
As to the gmail debate, this whole discussion is pure speculation and conspiracy theories. I haven't read through any other gmail threads so I could be wrong here but has anyone testing the system actually reported on how the ad serving works?
We have the little information Google has made available for a system in BETA testing, and a post showing that someone denied mail from gmail. Interesting but hardly enough to make a final or even educated decision.
Google was every one's hero when everything they offered was free and they weren't making big bucks. Results were fast, accurate, easy to game, and the profits and money to companies in their free index were rolling in in droves.
The second they try to monetize their "gift" of free money generating traffic that has led to the success, growth, and expansion of many many many companies they are evil, greedy money makers no better than Microsoft or AOL.
Let's not kid ourselves. Most of us are on the web to make money and Google has no doubt played a major part of that success. To expect them to stay stagnant and never try new things in an effort to make money, grow their business, put the heat on their competitors and keep the web frash and interesting is rediculous.
I'll sign up for a gmail account just as many of you will to see what all the fuss is about even if it is to see what ads it will display. Try telling millions of people that a free e-mail account with 1gb of space, no dating or mortgage flashing banners the ability to store large files such as photos (and with this whole camera phone phenom you know they will love the space)that gmail is stupid and your business is not wanted. Sure there will be the privacy advocates, there always are and for good reason but they are a loud and very small minority of the total web population.
Verdict = not engouh information
The concept of, "I refuse to communicate with anyone with a GMail account because GMail contextual ads may redirect that prospect/customer away from my company," will NOT have any beneficial effect to you because the act of refusing to communicate has already lost you the prospect/customer.
If you tell your customer, "You can't be my customer until you change your email address because I am worried you'll find a better vendor," you will lose that customer. You could choose to market that message wrapped up in "privacy concerns", but in the end, customer choice reigns supreme and all you've accomplished is turning customers away. :)
The choices to be made about GMail are going to be made by consumers and they will be based on their experiences with the GMail service. You can reject GMail users for "privacy fear" but while we are exploring slippery slopes, why wouldn't you also reject all Windows users because of "privacy fear" or even "virus fear?"
*FUD [google.com]
If G is going to serve my ads in emails where relevant and the payback is that my competitors may get to serve their ads in my emails, then surely it's a zero sum game.
I guess the issue works our differently when you're not "sleeping with the enemy" as I am and don't use adwords yourself, but that's my 2 cents.
Let's suppose that they use tape for the backup. At some later point, you cancel your account. Are they supposed to go through all their tapes at that point and delete your email? Not practical--tape doesn't work that way. So they just write into their terms of service that they keep copies of everything forever.
Believe it or not, if you are currently on a shared server and your ISP does backups, then they keep your email forever, whether they tell you or not. If they don't, then they don't have a proper backup scheme. The only thing new here, is the privacy implications of backups are being exposed.
If you are worried about Google's bot going through your email and picking out keywords, what's different about that than a mail proxy that scans for viruses and spam?
And that is part of the problem. There is no opt-out for the business (and far as we know from what Google has published). You involuntarily will be advertising your competitors free-of-charge. The customer may think the adverts are recommendations or sister-companies.
It is being assumed that the customers will arrive from Google and that they will have already seen the adverts. Well, that depends on what the customer searched for and what the adverts taken from email contents will display. Could be quite a different set of adverts. Also, there will be lots of gmail users that do not search using google. It isn't too strange: I have hotmail users that search on Yahoo and Yahoo email users that search using google. Why should gmail users be any different?
The problem is the precedent it sets. Who thinks msn, yahoo, and aol wouldn't follow suit?
What else might be inserted into my emails to others without my consent in the future? Different colored and identified ads? Inserting text links within the context like much scumware does to websites?
Where will the line be drawn on modifying my outgoing email? Not just now with gmail, but everyplace in the future.
I won't be responding to a @gmail.com address simply because I don't need Google scanning my email and providing advertisements related to whatever my message may be about.
I dont want to go in the moral/ethical discussion but purely a business view...
Many said they will deny gmail address because competitors ads will appear on their mails - so what you risk a chance you *MAY* loose that customer to a competitor? - say there is a 50% chance ...but if you deny his gmail.com address you anyway almost loose that customer , say a 80% chance
Me at anytime will take a 50% chance of loosing a customer than a 80% :)
But said all this there is a real risk for google on the legal side - i guess the US lawsuit industry will be looking on this with salivating interest! - here comes a chance of suing a big popular company with big cash in one of the crucial periods of their existance (pre-IPO)
Is it really a gig of space? Have you tried to fill it up by uploading something huge? I know they say search, not sort, but do they let you create folders anyway?
- Yes, it's a gig of space.
- No, you can't just "fill it up." There are limits (10 meg) on attachment size.
- You can't create 'folders', but you can label conversations (threads). On the downside, I believe it's not possible to label individual e-mails. But on a positive note, you can use more than one label per e-mail, which provides a lot of neat functionality over a flat folder hierarchy (e.g., you can label a thread as "music" and "todo" to indicate that it's about some music stuff that requires followup action on your part).
Hope this helps :)
Is what google doing different?
Perhaps we need a new email system that cannot be exploited in this way. Where legitimate email cannot be arbitrarily deleted or altered.
Many internet users prefer ads to paying for email. As long as this is true we can't make a change.
Many internet users prefer simplicity to encryption, as long as this is true we can't make a change.
Maybe we need to start with schools.
The fact is, AOL does not own the internet and when sites refuse them, it is AOL who has to step down from its arrogance or LOSE their customers who they are inhibiting. And the same is true for the G brand if it continues down the same path of thinking they "own" the internet so much as to have the power to wrongly change the rules when the rest of us are not willing to accept the tyranny.
I re-iterate, therefore, GMAIL users, like AOL users already (and other like throwaway addresses like Y and HM), are the ones who will lose. And when they see that even more than one site refuses their addresses, they will make the change (because they can) if they want the freedom to function and order valuable services online.
If google doesn't make money they are great but the second they try to make money from the very good will they extended many people since their launch they are tyrants.
This comes from people trying to make money and grow their business. Guess we're all tyrants. Especially everyone that makes more money than me. :-)
Many may hate yahoo mail, hotmail, gmail, etc and some people may choose to move on but I don't think the "you can't order with your hotmail e-mail" message will over power the allure of FREE especially when it's 1gb of storage space and the cool factor of have yourfirstname at google dot com as your email address.
Also, I wonder what the statistics are for people who sign up for free accounts so they can buy stuff during the holiday shopping season or anytime online and then never use them again?
GMAIL users, like AOL users already (and other like throwaway addresses like Y and HM), are the ones who will lose. And when they see that even more than one site refuses their addresses, they will make the change
I don't know, MultiMan. I've told probably more than 100 friends and clients that the emails they send to me either never get to me at all or end up sitting in my "suspected" spam box because they're using AOL, Yahoo Mail, or some similar email account that my spamfilter penalizes more because of the sending domain.
And not one of those people has changed their email address.
On the other hand, I know many clients who have changed their web sites, changed their newsletter email format, etc., to make it possible for AOL users to do business with them.
I'm betting that if Gmail gets enough users, businesses (smart ones, at least) will figure out they better not bolt the front door and keep the Gmail crowd out.
