Google Email? Would You Trade Off Ads For Better Email Search?

Email

from the but,-of-course... dept

The big discussion that I’ve been having with a few different people over the last few weeks is whether or not Google would get into the email business – and, if so, how? To me, it seems like an obvious extension of their technology and business model – but not everyone agrees. However, the rumors are getting louder and louder that Google is developing an email product. The question is whether they’ll be offering an entire “Google Email” system, or if they’re just working on a version of their AdSense offering that would work within email (generating contextual ads based on the content of the email). Some people I’ve spoken to about it thought that people would freak out if they thought Google was reading their email to do its contextualization magic – which could be true. The question is how many people will freak out – and will plenty of others be more than willing to welcome the Google contextualization engine into their inbox, in exchange for the ability to actually “Google your email”? Many people always seem to want the ability to better search through their own email. I could see a certain willingness from many people to let Google place ads in their email in exchange for the ability to better search through all the email. If Google could figure out a good anti-spam solution, as well, it could be a real hit.