Thursday, May 06, 2004

Mossberg on Gmail

Seems like everyone has an opinion on Gmail. Heck, I have been blogging too much about it myself. Today Walt Mossberg (the same Walt Mossberg that in this blog I called the most powerful person in consumer technology) weighed in on Gmail. While you can read his entire article here, let me summarize it for you by quoting his final paragraph:

"So I'm calling on Google to preserve its sterling reputation for honesty and customer focus by offering an alternative form of the new Gmail service. The company should offer Gmail accounts without the ads, and without the scanning, for a modest annual fee. That would put the choice where Google has always placed it: in the hands of its users."

I think Walt is 95% of the way to the solution that will make everyone happy. Allow users to either use Gmail in its current form, ads and all for free or allow all those who are worried about the privacy issues pay a small annual fee and their email will not be scanned and no ads will appear on their pages. Let me know what you think.

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