Google Is Reading Your Gmail?!

I was perusing Webpronews website this morning and read a article by Doug Caverly called, "Microsoft CEO Says Google Reads Your Mail."

The article says that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, accused Google of reading email that is housed in their Gmail system. Why would he make this accusation? Maybe he was playing some dirty pool to promote their Windows Live Hotmail system especially after the fact the that they had just re-done the monetization.

Looking a little deeper the article on Webpronews references a write up on CRN.com by Ed Moltzen. This article says that, "...Google reads customer email as part of a failed bid to drive ad-based revenue. Ballmer isn't the first to fire salvos at Google's Gmail privacy policy. Privacy advocates have been critical over the policy almost since the beginning, but the popularity of the service has skyrocketed nonetheless."

To date, the big G has not come forward to defend themselves against these accusations. Google does publicly admit that they "processes personal information" on their servers but they never come out and explicitly say that they are reading your email. They haven't said that they aren't reading your email either.

So what do you do? Just like any other email system, whether its a free service or a hosted email service, don't send anything that would need to be kept private or secure. I am not real convinced that if you are exchanging recipes via email with a buddy, Google will step up and start spamming you with Pampered Chef and recipe oriented direct emails.

This whole thing is interesting nonetheless.

What say you?