…might be overplayed. I ran across this video today over at Blogoscoped, where an ominous-sounding narrator explains why Google reading my e-mails to serve ads is a dangerous violation to privacy.
On one level it sounds a little ridiculous. “Oooh! Google is reading your e-mail!”
But on another level I think there are some real and valid points in here that ought to be thought about.
In my mind, the two things that this video surfaces that actually deserve some attention are:
- Email drafts are sent unsecured over the open internet
- Making web apps more desktop-like means removing security features
The drafts situation is worrisome largely because it seems to defeat the purpose of having any sort of secure connection for your webmail.
While I think the amount of e-mail that gets actively “snooped” is probably a lot lower than it seems (let’s be realistic, does your boss really have time to read through all the e-mail getting sent and received by all of her employees?), it does matter from a trust standpoint to maintain a secure environment for the user.
And I understand Google’s interest in making web appls feel more like desktop apps. I’m in total support of that—there are plenty of advantages to having off-site data and off-site applications, not the least of which is that it makes switching devices nearly pain-free.
I also approve of the idea that we want web-based applications to look, feel, and respond like native desktop applications. That’s the holy grail of web apps.
But I don’t think that should extend to ignoring the realities of how a web app works. A gmail desktop shortcut can look and feel like a desktop application, but still supply menu controls that identify HTTPS sites and perform other web-native functions. And I think that it should.
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