It all sounds so beautiful and helpfulness of Google, give everyone the possibility to create his or her own Gmail address. But what is the real reason of this humanity? Is Google the organization that really wants to give email to us or are there other (dark) reasons.

This is the true story is: The main source of income of Google is selling ads and Google definately wants to be the best. To achieve this it is necessary to collect as much information as possible about the people to whom they show an ad, so there are almost "ads on measures" so they are pretty sure the ads shown are about products and services you are interested in.

So far so good, there is Google so much keen to gather information about you.

When you create a mail address on http://www.gmail.com to take advantage of a mail address that you are accessible worldwide with a Web browser, you must agree to the terms and conditions. It is fair to say that they are not read in the vast majority of cases, but are accepted without (or with a healthy dose of) suspicion.

The few people who have read the conditions would have seen that the following text is included in the General conditions (for the freaks, the complete version of this document is on http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/)

“Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services."

So there you are, you have actually agreed that Google may use your mail messages for any purpose they want (including for publication or other forms of disclosure)! With effect from March 2012, Google is introducing new General conditions, the core of the message is eventhough the samen. The above text is taken from these new terms and conditions.

The next question is; Is all above a real threat? and how likely is it that my private mails will be shown through the Google search engine? My expectation is that the that the risk will be small. Google needs the information to collect data about you. By publication of your your mail messages it will damage the image of Google, with the great risk that users (massively) choose a mail variant at a competitor, making Google behind in it's information position.

Despite that, it is wise to take a look at the terms and conditions of various "free" services. Philanthropic organisations are rare and it is good to be aware of potential risks so that you can create a balance or you use the service will (continue to) ...

Soon there will be a second weblog about the Dropbox phenomenon that is used by more and more people in a simple way to Exchange files ...