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Email Finally Emerges as a Platform

32 points by Setsuna 16y ago

loup-vaillant 16y ago
> That product was probably ahead of its time, it's not fully in the cloud and it's not free. > The key enabling factor […] is a secure way to grant temporary access to […] your email to trusted developers out in the larger ecosystem […] - all without ever giving them your precious email password. > The sky's the limit when you can quickly process huge stores of your own personal data, though. Am I the only one that find that downright scary? Who wants a future in which several (not just one) profitable companies can access your e-mail and analysing it blazing fast? That may be a dream for some, but for me that's an Orwellian nightmare. Here's a reminder, for the few that haven't seen it yet: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/01/freedom-cloud-software-freedom-privacy-and-securit/ http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/01/freedom-clou...
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  "Who wants a future in which several (not just one) profitable companies can access your e-mail and analysing it blazing fast?" It's all about choice. If I want to grant some organisation access to all, or a subset of my email, then that's fine. It's up to the individual what they want to share and with whom.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    It's going to take a long time, though, before it really sinks in to the general population that you cannot reliably remove access to data. In the interim, we'll continue to have lots of hand-wringing and legal flailing about, which makes this whole space uncertain for companies too large to move offshore and too small to throw lobbyists at the problem.
    - mike-cardwell 16y ago
      This is true. Not being able to completely "unshare" data is not something people generally consider before sharing.
    - mcav 16y ago
      It may take a while to sink in, but even if it does, the general public probably won't care enough to change their behavior. People want instant gratification; they'll see it at most as a gamble: "What are the odds that this company will do something wrong with my data?"... or at worst, they'll just ignore the risk of consequences completely, like many people do in daily life.
      - prodigal_erik 16y ago
        Which of course is the wrong question. The right question is "what are the odds that someone will acquire this company so that they can do something wrong to all its users?"
      - randallsquared 16y ago
        I actually assume that expectations will change, rather than behavior. People who grow up in a world where it's obvious that anyone who cares to can find out almost anything about them and their life will simply stop having any expectation of 20th-century-era privacy. The middle ground between secret and public is shrinking fast, and I think it will mostly cease to exist soon.
  - loup-vaillant 16y ago
    Most likely it will not be up to the individual. First, the individual will chose the default 80% of the time just because it's the default. Second, granting access to your data is irreversible: once a company has read it, you can't make it forget. It's no longer your choice. But you didn't answer the real question: would you willingly grant access to your e-mail to a profitable company? Do you know anyone who would?
    - bmelton 16y ago
      I think the obvious answer there is 'Yes'. Most people I know have their email accounts through GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL or what have you. Those companies are profitable, and their customers rely on them to host their email entirely outside of their own, individual control. Regarding your other point, the thing to note here is that these are separate services, which you would have to subscribe to in order to get them into your inbox. That's not to say that Google won't ever co-opt these features into GMail, but at least in the current, there's no 'default' option to allow my Inbox be accessible to some foreign party.
      - loup-vaillant 16y ago
        Ah, you caught the catch. Indeed, remote, centralized accounts are nearly universal. But I wonder if people actually realize the direct consequence: their provider has access to their e-mail. For instance, when I say to people that Google is performing semantic analysis on their e-mail, many are surprised, if not appalled. And the fact that no human is looking at the results doesn't reassure them much.
        bmelton 16y ago
        Do you also tell them that every email provider worth their salt is performing some sort of analysis on their mail? It's not particular to Google. Google didn't invent mail routing, or spam filtering, or any of the other reasons that people would be scanning my mail. Hotmail, Yahoo, et al have been doing it since far before GMail was even a product.
camworld 16y ago
Again, completely useless unless you are using Gmail. Wake me when they come out with a Firefox plugin that doesn't require Gmail. Really cool, though (I'm referring to Rapportive).
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  I can see other desktop email clients and webmail clients wanting to add this sort of functionality. Does rapportive offer any sort of API to the social networking data they display?
  - olegp 16y ago
    Take a look at http://www.rapleaf.com/developer http://www.rapleaf.com/developer
naner 16y ago
Some of these sound useful but I think we could all do without the services that append more crap to your email. It's obnoxious.

32 points by Setsuna 16y ago

> That product was probably ahead of its time, it's not fully in the cloud and it's not free. > The key enabling factor […] is a secure way to grant temporary access to […] your email to trusted developers out in the larger ecosystem […] - all without ever giving them your precious email password. > The sky's the limit when you can quickly process huge stores of your own personal data, though. Am I the only one that find that downright scary? Who wants a future in which several (not just one) profitable companies can access your e-mail and analysing it blazing fast? That may be a dream for some, but for me that's an Orwellian nightmare. Here's a reminder, for the few that haven't seen it yet: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/01/freedom-cloud-software-freedom-privacy-and-securit/ http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/01/freedom-clou...

mike-cardwell 16y ago
"Who wants a future in which several (not just one) profitable companies can access your e-mail and analysing it blazing fast?" It's all about choice. If I want to grant some organisation access to all, or a subset of my email, then that's fine. It's up to the individual what they want to share and with whom.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  It's going to take a long time, though, before it really sinks in to the general population that you cannot reliably remove access to data. In the interim, we'll continue to have lots of hand-wringing and legal flailing about, which makes this whole space uncertain for companies too large to move offshore and too small to throw lobbyists at the problem.
  - mike-cardwell 16y ago
    This is true. Not being able to completely "unshare" data is not something people generally consider before sharing.
  - mcav 16y ago
    It may take a while to sink in, but even if it does, the general public probably won't care enough to change their behavior. People want instant gratification; they'll see it at most as a gamble: "What are the odds that this company will do something wrong with my data?"... or at worst, they'll just ignore the risk of consequences completely, like many people do in daily life.
    - prodigal_erik 16y ago
      Which of course is the wrong question. The right question is "what are the odds that someone will acquire this company so that they can do something wrong to all its users?"
    - randallsquared 16y ago
      I actually assume that expectations will change, rather than behavior. People who grow up in a world where it's obvious that anyone who cares to can find out almost anything about them and their life will simply stop having any expectation of 20th-century-era privacy. The middle ground between secret and public is shrinking fast, and I think it will mostly cease to exist soon.
- loup-vaillant 16y ago
  Most likely it will not be up to the individual. First, the individual will chose the default 80% of the time just because it's the default. Second, granting access to your data is irreversible: once a company has read it, you can't make it forget. It's no longer your choice. But you didn't answer the real question: would you willingly grant access to your e-mail to a profitable company? Do you know anyone who would?
  - bmelton 16y ago
    I think the obvious answer there is 'Yes'. Most people I know have their email accounts through GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL or what have you. Those companies are profitable, and their customers rely on them to host their email entirely outside of their own, individual control. Regarding your other point, the thing to note here is that these are separate services, which you would have to subscribe to in order to get them into your inbox. That's not to say that Google won't ever co-opt these features into GMail, but at least in the current, there's no 'default' option to allow my Inbox be accessible to some foreign party.
    - loup-vaillant 16y ago
      Ah, you caught the catch. Indeed, remote, centralized accounts are nearly universal. But I wonder if people actually realize the direct consequence: their provider has access to their e-mail. For instance, when I say to people that Google is performing semantic analysis on their e-mail, many are surprised, if not appalled. And the fact that no human is looking at the results doesn't reassure them much.
      - bmelton 16y ago
        Do you also tell them that every email provider worth their salt is performing some sort of analysis on their mail? It's not particular to Google. Google didn't invent mail routing, or spam filtering, or any of the other reasons that people would be scanning my mail. Hotmail, Yahoo, et al have been doing it since far before GMail was even a product.

camworld 16y ago

Again, completely useless unless you are using Gmail. Wake me when they come out with a Firefox plugin that doesn't require Gmail. Really cool, though (I'm referring to Rapportive).

mike-cardwell 16y ago
I can see other desktop email clients and webmail clients wanting to add this sort of functionality. Does rapportive offer any sort of API to the social networking data they display?
- olegp 16y ago
  Take a look at http://www.rapleaf.com/developer http://www.rapleaf.com/developer

naner 16y ago

Some of these sound useful but I think we could all do without the services that append more crap to your email. It's obnoxious.