Gmail Update

Tim O'Reilly (yes, that O'Reilly) gives nine reasons why concerns about privacy on Google's new Gmail are "bogus." (Via John Battelle.)

Still amazed by that 1 gig of storage Gmail's offering? Rich Skrenta explains how it's possible:

It's straightforward to spreadsheet out the economics of the service, taking into account average storage per user, cost of the servers, and monetization per user per year. Google apparently puts the operational cost of storage at $2 per gigabyte. My napkin math comes up with numbers in the same ballpark. I would assume the yearly monetized value of a webmail user to be in the $1-10 range.

And if you've been reading about memory and storage lately, you already know it's getting cheaper and cheaper. As O'Reilly points out, before long someone who wants to "could film every moment of his life, and carry the record around in a pocket."

Still, Jeremy Zawodny wonders what all the fuss over Gmail is about.

Regardless, California Senator Liz Figueroa's proposed legislature seems like an overreaction to any privacy issues.