Hard call. They offer great free services and have changed the landscape of email, phone, and document communication. Yet they are one entity with all the information of DeJa News, Keyhole Maps, YouTube, DoubleClick, GrandCentral, Gizmo5, DocVerse, and their own email and app offerings. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google)
So yes, it is refreshing to see transparency of "Engineer fired for snooping where they shouldnt". But we keep using them as a service, so it's a hard problem to combat. After all, the price is right. Just costs your privacy.
I have a blackberry hooked up to Google Voice and Mail servers. They know my name, address, all my phone numbers, all my emails, my contact lists, frequency I receive calls on my Google number, text transcription of voicemails. They also can potentially record every call I receive and make with GV.
Considering the benefit I get from just Mail and GV, the datamining is a cost I'm willing to make. I also know if my phone is lost, I dont lose my data. And I can back it up elsewhere.
And I am somewhat happily shocked that they came such forthright that they "fired him for snooping". Most places will only say "They no longer work for the company".
>After all, the price is right. Just costs your privacy.
It is worth pointing out that payable cloud services may also cost you your privacy. It has happened before, various data leaks, stolen passwords, etc.
So yes, it is refreshing to see transparency of "Engineer fired for snooping where they shouldnt". But we keep using them as a service, so it's a hard problem to combat. After all, the price is right. Just costs your privacy.