Gmail from Google and its Potential Ramifications Essay -- Email Inter

Gmail from Google and its Potential Ramifications Internet technology is accelerating the rate of globalization. Email, in particular, is now one of the fastest ways for us to communicate with each other, and to do business, making our world much smaller and more immediate. This same technology that can enhance our lives and accelerates the pace of global change can also destroy our personal privacy at the same rate. The newest web based email service, which has gained more attention than most, is Gmail [1]from Google.com. Google currently hosts the most popular Internet search engine world wide. Google proposes to deploy a unique email service that will give users capability not available with other providers; most importantly 1GB of email storage space. Gmail will use Google’s sophisticated search technology to perform searches on a person’s email saved in their account. This searching feature allows a user to quickly locate and display relevant information from a previous email and not spend time scrolling through long lists of messages in email folders. Despite this new capability, Gmail has raised concerns from Internet users and privacy groups around the world. Another feature that Google plans to implement in the email service is targeted advertising. Google’s engines will search the content of a person’s email and display advertisements that are relevant to key words pulled from the messages. Many people see the idea that a company would scan personal email messages, for any reason, to be a great invasion of privacy and are protesting the deployment of this feature. Some privacy groups are suggesting that Google’s automated searches would violate the privacy laws of certain countries like Germany [2... ...services and Google should strive to remain ethical and committed to the privacy agreements made between the company and the users Bibliography Google.com, 28 Apr. 2004, https://gmail.google.com Jan Libbenga, 8 Apr. 2004 , The Register, 28 Apr. 2004, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/08/gmail_germany/ Simon Davies, 19 Apr. 2004, Privacy International, 28 Apr. 2004, http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/internet/gmail-complaint.pdf The Press Center, 2004, Google.com, 28 Apr. 2004, http://www.google.com/press/overview.html Google Zeitgeist, 28 Apr. 2004, Google.com, 28 Apr. 2004, http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html Gmail Privacy Policy, 08 Apr. 2004, Google.com, 28 Apr. 2004, http://www.google.com/gmail/help/privacy.html Dawn Kawamoto, 29 Apr. 2004, CNET News.com, 29 Apr. 2004, http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5202120.html