[loup-vaillant]

Most likely it will not be up to the individual.

First, the individual will chose the default 80% of the time just because it's the default. Second, granting access to your data is irreversible: once a company has read it, you can't make it forget. It's no longer your choice.

But you didn't answer the real question: would you willingly grant access to your e-mail to a profitable company? Do you know anyone who would?

[mike-cardwell]

"would you willingly grant access to your e-mail to a profitable company"

That's not a yes/no question. I would grant some companies some level of access to some of my email some of the time.

One example: I might grant a spam filtering company read access to the contents of my "Junk E-Mail" folder in exchange for being able to use their black list. Subject to privacy policy contents as always.

[bmelton]

I think the obvious answer there is 'Yes'. Most people I know have their email accounts through GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL or what have you. Those companies are profitable, and their customers rely on them to host their email entirely outside of their own, individual control.

Regarding your other point, the thing to note here is that these are separate services, which you would have to subscribe to in order to get them into your inbox. That's not to say that Google won't ever co-opt these features into GMail, but at least in the current, there's no 'default' option to allow my Inbox be accessible to some foreign party.

[loup-vaillant]

Ah, you caught the catch. Indeed, remote, centralized accounts are nearly universal. But I wonder if people actually realize the direct consequence: their provider has access to their e-mail.

For instance, when I say to people that Google is performing semantic analysis on their e-mail, many are surprised, if not appalled. And the fact that no human is looking at the results doesn't reassure them much.

[bmelton]

Do you also tell them that every email provider worth their salt is performing some sort of analysis on their mail?

It's not particular to Google. Google didn't invent mail routing, or spam filtering, or any of the other reasons that people would be scanning my mail. Hotmail, Yahoo, et al have been doing it since far before GMail was even a product.

[loup-vaillant]

Oh yes I did. But I admit I put the emphasis on Google because of their "Big Brother" aura. From there, it's easy to talk about the dangers of centralized e-mail in general.