Gmail is one of the largest email services, with fanatical fans but also many opponents. If someone thinks about how the service began to evolve and what has happened over time, they will remember the experiment with the frog in the pot. The frog does not feel the subtle changes in temperature as the water heats up. We have forced ourselves to adapt to every change in Gmail . We have learned to type a little slower in case we activate a shortcut. We have learned to use our email attachments in new ways and to handle the cc: and bcc: fields. We have learned to ignore the constant advertisements, which initially appeared in the right column, but recently came to our Inbox.
We have been taught not to think about how strange it is that all the ads we are presented with match exactly what is being discussed INSIDE our email. Google has millions of people on its services and can deliver the feature packed into its free email service. The only price is our privacy. We will continue to enjoy the benefits of the service as the comparison with other alternative services probably favors Google, but we must face the inevitable reality, we have sold our beliefs and our privacy for free email.
Think about it: We complain and maybe even fight about the U.S. government’s spying tactics that invade our privacy, and then to view our emails we use a service designed specifically to harvest information. Does that sound hypocritical? It probably isn’t. Google uses Gmail as a gateway to a world that always runs according to the company. Google is looking for ways to manage our photos, our social media, our emails, our documents, our daily tasks, and more. It collects our information in its databases that have become the largest information filtering company in the world. By continuing to use Google services , we are continuing to concentrate human knowledge in one service, and it does so easily…one email at a time. This is probably the new world of the Internet, where privacy is a historical footnote and we are ready to be tricked or simply bribed into giving up a service like Gmail.
Generally speaking, no one wants it. In reality, however, we hand over our personal lives on a platter in exchange for a spam-free, easily accessible service, and we do it with a smile, over and over again.
Too many people clearly believe that the unprecedented revelations about the protection of our privacy following the revelations of the NSA through PRISM, and the global culture of eavesdropping and silent mass sharing of our personal information, should lead us to new reforms. Is the fact that Gmail is being used with impunity something that should concern us?
Gmail is certainly a service full of features and quite useful, so useful that we have come to consider it indispensable. Not only can we no longer live without it – we don't even want to think about it.
The frog is covered in boiling water up to its neck. Guess who the frog is.
The article was published on ZDNet by David Braue with the title Gmail is boiling the frog – and we are the frog.
