Someone is a Bit Overly Paranoid

We all know Google, the search engine, the mail, the maps... I always thought that everyone loved them as much as I do. I recently discovered that there are people that fear Google and have created a site explicitly stating why Google is awful. They call the site Google Watch. I read a bit of the site (it is pretty extensive), and a lot of it pretty amusing. In particular, one of their fears regarding Gmail:

Google offers more storage for your email than other Internet service providers that we know about. The powerful searching encourages account holders to never delete anything. It takes three clicks to put a message into the trash, and more effort to delete this message. It's much easier to "archive" the message, or just leave it in the inbox and let the powerful searching keep track of it ... Google wants very much to get to know you better.

Wow! I never realized what a risk I was taking. From now on I will only use my own mail server, and to be doubly safe I will only keep hard copies of all my email. I'll even take their advice and refuse to write to anyone at a Gmail account.

Fortunately I don't have to waste my time writing a full response to their site. Someone else already has. Check out Google Watch Watch.