Ehtyar, what injustices exactly? I'm not aware of them. If you're just now concerned with [online service] email, then you're way late to the game. How many services have come and gone over the years -- AOL, MSN, Yahoo, MyRealBox, the original Hotmail, etc.?

Google has never correlated user data with user identity, or with the search terms people input. This can be done through cookies and IP addresses. For example, any spam filter has to 'read' the email in order to determine its junk status. And remember, Gmail is more than a mere mail program, it pushes ads and encourages more search (to push more ad revenue). Heck, run the traceroute command at a command prompt on any Linux system (including Mac OS X) or tracert on a Windows system to see the hops that your internet packets go through from your machine to any destination site. Anyone equipped with a packet sniffer at any of those sites can snoop any mail that they want. In fact, the NSA recently proved the effectiveness of this approach by tracking down terrorists by way of their mail traffic.

Privacy is always a slippery slope. But we're already a long way down that slope, and I have a lot more trust in Google to do the right thing to protect my privacy than I have in banking institutions, credit card, and direct marketing companies! (How does every company know that I have a small penis, for example!) The reason I do is because Google could have violated that trust long ago, but hasn't. They still may, but I certainly don't see why Google is being singled out. For me, there are so many bigger issues to worry about, from RFID tagging (see the recent Mythbusters post here on DC) to surveillance cameras on city streets and highways, that programmed scanning of email for targeted ad insertion doesn't seem like too big a deal to me, especially when it's disclosed up front to willing participants in the service.

Wow! Well said Kartal! Time will tell, I suppose how justified our paranoia is, but I'm erring on the side of caution.

Zridling,

Google is singled out because Google has become a data octopus. Your bank knows your bank records, they do not know what contacts you have on your phone or what your plan is next week. Your phone company may know your calls and contacts but they do not know about your purchasing history or what you watch on youtube. Now every company has only one side of the picture. On the other hand Google has many sides of the picture by search, email, map,health records, google checkout, book search, calendar, youtube, driving directions, you name it. It is conducting masssive data mining to figure out who you are and what you might be interested in to sell you more ads. That is very very legitimate concern aand noone should be this powerful. Sooner or later Google will abuse its power like every powerful entity in the world or world history. When it comes to for profit entities, abuse will be unquestionable result especially when we have corrupt politicians, legalized bribing(lobbies), and every kinds of social-national scares and paranoias(boogey man will get you that is why we shared your info to save you and your privacy bullsh$t)

Certainly couldn't have said it any better myself.

Ehtyar.

Good post kartal!

We should also remember that being paranoid we can expect that online storage might be not secure in real life. The problem appears when it comes to something closer to us - what we haven't think about. If someone will come to my house he/she can expect that I will know about toilet paper that person used or does he/she clean hands after "an urge" but if I try to put my fingers into someone's wallet it will stop being OK. It's obvious that placing a bug in purse/bag will be not acceptable. And that is the main reason of all concerns from my side. Maybe it's just a matter of the trust while inviting someone (hope they will not stab me in the back) but history can learn us that many good ideas ended up horrible. We can all discuss about ideal nation in Plato's meaning or loving your foe but as good we can watch how the grass grow

Edited
Grrr dozen seconds too late...

2mouser
You would be so vociferous (I didn't know that word) on my place: used to live in small town, everybody knows everyone and you're having long hairs Not hard to find ya. With such "burden" you can really appreciate the need for privacy. And even if you've got extravert nature, you want to have a tiny part of you for yourself only. How can you do that if so many people are allowed to x-ray you? That mob is big enough to be worried about. There is no need for additional viewers for your own "Mouser Show" (with Jim C. as main character)

Shouldn't they be making money from the ads they shove in our face day after day? Since when did selling tracking data become such a socially accepted method of profiteering?

Ehtyar.

In contrast to belief that the civilization(mainly western civilization) is going forward and getting better, I would say that civilization is just getting worse and dim. We are getting so good at technique that we put real possible meanings of life and our civilizations all aside. This mastery of technique gives some of those a feeling of an unmatched level of supremacy and confidence. I urge all of you who put great trust and belief in this system of techniques to go back to the roots of enlightment(which is what has started all of this), and start criticizing and questioning everthing around you in an objectible way like the enlightment movement itself encouraged . Those who never put any real thought process in philosophical side of life and social-historical evolution of mankind  should start value the ideas of those who put real energy and effort of thinking into these important matters. These are not merely issues of credit card thefts or selling your silly web browsing habits. What I am talking about here is the future we are preparing for our kids. They will grow up in a future where man has no soul, where an individual means nothing but a just number or rfid tag, where a citizen is nothing but a stupid worker a human shell. I am not buying into this, that is why I have no problem raising my concerns.

We are living in societies in which social engineering, data mining has become a de facto standard of governing masses because of those who think that they have nothing to loose by obeying. I would have no problem if the power corners were flexing their muscles only on those who accept this form of rape. But they have a very big brush and their brush does not  distinguish the ones who accept their will and the ones who do not. So those who accept the rules of game, enjoy it to the maximum and hope that their gain is bigger than those who provide this orgy of opportunities, please do respect rights of others and do not participate in this crowd behaviour, at least try to minimize blind running to every free opportunity due to respect for others. 

And here we go again... oh hell how I hate there dudes who think Firefox have done all those things first and alone... eh... how about opening your eyes and look even futher.... Alot of those "firefox innovations" are actually been first in Opera and then copypasted to Firefox as new innovations... sounds like Microsoft to me in this scenario... and when I have to compare Firefox to Microsoft, things are getting pretty ugly...

You seem to be skipping a key difference. The only real part of Firefox Mozilla has claimed to be innovative is the addon system. It is via this mechanism that the Firefox community develop functionality for Firefox that may mimic that found in another browser, and even then, most often the developer will highlight the fact that the feature he/she has added is found in another browser. When Microsoft develop a browser that even remotely encourages community development, then come back and make your case.

Ehtyar.

Alot of those "firefox innovations" are actually been first in Opera and then copypasted to Firefox as new innovations ...

I was an admirer of Opera; I paid for it. Before that I admired Netscape, and I have fond memories with Cello. (You guys remember this one?) They all borrowed from Mosaic, ideas if not code. And in my mind, the true heroes are Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, John von Neumann, and Alan Turing, among others.

Progress is made with the help of many. The mouse on my desk is great (not perfect, but great). It got here because Xerox PARC invented it, Apple popularized it, Logitech improved on it, and I paid for it.

Just as Ehtyar said, Firefox excels with its open architecture. It gains its popularity thanks to that. With that success it gets to challenge IE a bit. I don't see why this is upsetting to Opera fans.

Chrome is not about access to your data on any platform, any device.

The mere fact that it will never support my current OS is proof of that.

It's not about providing those that need a fast safe minimalistic browser the most, with another option. I need fast safe and minimalistic and I can't run it.

It's not about running Adobe AIR apps. They already run without Chrome. They don't need this. They don't run in a browser.

So what is Chrome about? So far, it's about Javascript, and how fast it can run in a browser. Google has plans on creating stuff...websites... that will never work in any existing browser. It could be your webmail if you are a gmail user.

I hope you aren't too dependent on any Google service and running an OS that will never be supported by Chrome. You could end up finding yourself locked out of your account.

I only hope Google gets what Microsoft got for all the same crazy crap. Remember MSJVM, ActiveX, JScript, VBScript, and the rest? It all created a browser nightmare and a lot of browser incompatibility with sites designed just for IE.

Not sure what I am talking about? Would you like to play some JScript games coded specifically for IE, in Firefox or Opera...or maybe Chrome? Good luck!

You may be seeing similar results when you try to access certain Google services, in the future, specifically written to run only with Google's custom javascript engine, unless you run the browser of Google's choice instead of the browser of your own choice. I think old time Netscape users can relate to what I am saying. They had to keep IE handy, because of the same kind of crap.

[app103]: The mere fact that it will never support my current OS is proof of that.

Which OS is that? They've already announced that they will release Linux and OSX versions after the Windows version is beta tested.

[app103]: So what is Chrome about? So far, it's about Javascript, and how fast it can run in a browser. Google has plans on creating stuff...websites... that will never work in any existing browser. It could be your webmail if you are a gmail user.... I hope you aren't too dependent on any Google service and running an OS that will never be supported by Chrome. You could end up finding yourself locked out of your account.

Google went to the trouble of rewriting Javascript, the programming language that underlies many webware apps. According to online Javascript speed tests, Google’s version is twice as fast as IE7’s. The Webkit rendering engine is also open source. And yes, Google is building a platform for running the software of the future, thereby de-emphasizing Windows and other operating systems. This opens rather than restricts data sharing. Google will not lock you in. When you're ready to switch, you can take your data with you. Can't say the same for you-know-who. The fact that it is open source means its enhancements can be used (okay, Microsoft can't) to make other browsers faster. Which, for Google, means their ads are delivered faster. No one is selling a browser, so let's hope the ones with the best features and performance wins the largest share of the market, right?

[app103]: I only hope Google gets what Microsoft got for all the same crazy crap. Remember MSJVM, ActiveX, JScript, VBScript, and the rest? It all created a browser nightmare and a lot of browser incompatibility with sites designed just for IE.

Chrome uses open (W3C) standards and is open source. The whole point of open standards for developers is a write-once run anywhere code. Otherwise, you end up rewriting and endlessly futzing for what we had with IE, when it had a 90+% share of the browser market.

Most browsers were built over a decade ago. Since then, things have changed. The web certainly has. As Google’s blog puts it, "We realized that the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser." Check out the Chrome beta if you get a chance -- it's definitely stripped-down: no status bar, no menu bar, and only a single toolbar (for bookmarks). Chrome is minimalist in the extreme.

Two security features make it attractive for many: (1) each tab runs in its own “sandbox,” so that if there’s nasty spyware-type software running on one website, it has no access to the rest of your computer, or even the other tabs; and (2) Incognito mode, in which no cookies, passwords or cache files are saved, and the browser’s history list records no trace of your activity.

They're actually hoping other browsers will implement their javascript improvements to create a more equal level playing field, and provide the support to do so. So this should be all good.