Gmail

Google is known for its search results and by SEO companies for its search engine optimization potential. But why can't it provide further money making services? e-mail is killer application so why not use it to access areas that search engine advertising can't reach?

Gmail is Google's new free e-mail service. Free e-mail is hardly ground-breaking and is barely noticeable to the consumer market who can get free e-mail accounts at any number of Web sites. A public inundated with spam e-mail really doesn't want to know that one more free e-mail service is going add to their daily burden of spam. So why would anyone get so excited?

Well, Google has a very popular brand image. The public believes Google provides them with direct access to any information they need. Free uncontaminated search results and a respectable, law abiding image. That's a lot of good will to capitalize on and gmail can be nicely monetized.

With Gmail, Google wanted to insert advertising into the account holders mail message window. The advertising content would match the content of the individual's emails. If the message was a message from your stock broker, telling you to mortgage the house and buy Google stock, the ads Google places in the window might be about the Google IPO, stock purchases, and mortgages. Google would scan the e-mail and deliver ads in real time to your email window. The company wants to go beyond search engine results into new areas of advertising and gain wider exposure and new ad revenues. These are important considerations given the announced Google IPO.

The problem with that is people felt that if the Google robots were scanning or reading the message, it is a case of invasion of privacy. e-mail virus filters also scan e-mail messages for content. Anyone with the right tools and net connection can also scan through any e-mail travelling through the Web and read it.

Update: The California Senate has voted in favor of a bill that would restrict Google's implementation of Gmail The new bill require Gmail to work only in real-time and would bar the service from recording information, collecting personal information and giving away information to third parties.

So, the principle is more that it could be abused by Google staff or by the US government. Or it could give Google a decided technological advantage over competitor's email services including Yahoo and MSN. Even though the so called privacy threat is more of a philosophical one than a real threat to privacy, if Google is allowed to do this, then all e-mail providers will be able to do it. No regularly transmitted e-mail is secure on the Internet so the whole issue will be a tough one to solve.

The matter is before the courts who will be forced to make a ruling. If the courts rule against Google, they may drop the email service since they would have no technological or outstanding marketing advantage and the Gmail business model would make no sense. It would return to its roots and the obsession with search engine optimization practitioners!