[nooneelse]

There is an important distinction to be made, though, between employees at Google having access to read the contents of emails and them being able to run text analysis on those contents for ad-able words and phrases (what I was trying to get at by having the bank-generated weight-log in the example). Most people know that Google does the latter, but it is dubious that many people at Google have access (especially the kind of unconstrained access connoted by the term "rifled" in your modification of the deposit box) to do the former.

Also, it is not like a friend's garage; they aren't hosting people's email as a favor. It is more like a rent-a-storage-room place with a peculiar method of paying the rent; there is a business relationship/transaction going on. We trade algorithmic-advertising access to our emails in exchange for them providing hosting.