[goodside]

Why do you think nobody is reading his mail? In September of 2010 an employee was dismissed for spying on the mail and Google Voice calls of four underage teenagers he had been meeting in real life. There have to be people at Google who have authority to read read the mail of users for less scandalous reasons for this to even be possible.

[jonknee]

This will be the case for any mail provider. If you host yourself you still count on the fact that traffic to your server isn't being snooped on and always have the possibility of the authorities going in and snatching your box if they need to see your email (that won't happen with Google, but Google will comply with any requests and turn over your mail).

Encrypt your email if you want privacy. For even better privacy, don't use email at all (encrypted or not the headers need to be in the clear).

[icebraining]

always have the possibility of the authorities going in and snatching your box if they need to see your email

Encrypting your incoming email[1] fixes that particular problem. It's still not as good as getting others to use PGP, but on the other hand, it doesn't require getting others to use PGP ;)

[1]: https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...