| Oh come now....surely you don't believe that? The whole reason for Gmail is advertising....and it's clever....it doesn't 'give out your addy, etc', it taps the advertiser on the shoulder and points at you physically and says 'HE MIGHT JUST WANT YOUR PRODUCT...WITH OUR HELP AS AN INTERFACE WE [YOU] GET HIM' |
What makes you think that? I have never once clicked on an advertising link. The only way the advertiser is going to benefit is if I do click on their link. Sure, the whole purpose of the site is for advertising, but if I choose to ignore the beggar on the street, they go pester the next guy.
The whole purpose for Google is advertising too. How would they make money otherwise? Do you use Google to search? If you do, I don't understand your opposition to gmail. To me, it's the same thing. Advertising based on keywords. Links placed on a web page that I get to choose what to do with. I can ignore them, or I can choose to follow the link, which in turn supports the service that I am using.
Just like this site, it costs a lot of money to operate. They need support to keep it going. Wincustomize chooses to sell subscriptions. Google/Gmail chooses to use advertising.
The advertiser is not going to get any information about me, unless I choose to give it to him, just like the beggar on the street isn't going to get anything from me unless I choose to give it to him.
I have not received even 1 spam to my gmail account. It doesn't mean that if I give out my address to a spammer, that I wouldn't, but it does show that Google hasn't given it out to any spammers. They even have spam filters in gmail. They want to fight spam too.
