"A California state senator said Monday she was drafting legislation to block Google's free e-mail service 'Gmail' because it would place advertising in personal messages after searching them for key words. 'We think it's an absolute invasion of privacy. It's like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home,' said Sen. Liz Figueroa, a Democrat from Fremont, Calif, reports Reuters.
"We are asking them to rethink the whole product," she said.
Comment: this seems silly to me. The ads in Gmail are "Sponsored Links" and they are exactly the same as the ones in Google: they run down the side of the Web page, and are clearly separate from the message area. They are certainly no worse than having banner ads in another Web-based mail service, and arguably better. The main trick is that the links are based on the Google software's idea of what you might be interested in buying, based on words in your mail. In my case, "Web Mail for Power Users" (www.mailsnare.net) is the kind of link that comes up.
