Google's 'Gmail' under fire
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-07 08:24

Search engine Google's new free e-mail service, "Gmail," is under fire from privacy groups even before it has been officially launched.

Google is the world's most popular search engine.

One campaign group, Privacy International, says Gmail violates European privacy laws because it stores messages on its system long after users have deleted them from their mailbox.

The group, which has offices in Britain and the United States, also opposes Google's plans to scan users' e-mail in order to paste appropriate advertising into messages.

"This is not just 'buyer beware.' Consumers should be aware that there's a vast violation of European law occurring here," Reuters quoted Simon Davies, director of citizens' group Privacy International, as saying.

Europe's privacy protection laws are much stricter than those in the United States, where Google is based. European consumers, for example, have the right to retain control over their communications.

"If a person deletes an e-mail, he should be confident that e-mail is actually deleted," Maurice Westerling, co-founder of Bits of Freedom, another privacy interest group, based in the Netherlands, told Reuters.

"Besides, Google cannot just open e-mails. Communication in Europe has a very high degree of protection."

As part of its service, Gmail would include a built-in search function that will let people search every e-mail they've ever sent or received.

According to company executives, users will be able to type in keywords to sort e-mails or find old missives.

Google, which is the world's most popular search engine and is launching Gmail to compete against rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft, argues e-mails will remain private because it will assign computers, not people, to scan content.

"No humans read your e-mail to target the ads," it said on its Web site.

It will come with one gigabyte of free storage -- more than 100 times what some popular rivals offer and enough to hold 500,000 pages of e-mail.

Analysts have said that Google -- whose technology is behind nearly four out of every five Web searches -- could shake up the free e-mail market.

Yahoo! dominates the e-mail niche, with 52.6 million unique users per month in the United States, according to a February survey by online research firm comScore Media Metrix.

Microsoft's Hotmail is next, with 45.4 million users. AOL has 40.2 million paying users.

Rivals have kept stripped versions of e-mail free and asked users to pay annual fees up to $30 or more for extra storage and spam protection.

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