Gmail is a free POP3 and IMAP webmail service provided by Google.[1][2] In the United Kingdom and Germany it is officially called Google Mail.
Gmail launched on April 1, 2004, as an invitation only beta release and became available to the public on February 7, 2007. Despite quickly gaining tens of millions of users,[3][4][5] Gmail remained in open beta for over five years, until that label was finally removed in July 2009.[6]
Google typically maintains significant and detailed documentation of their privacy practices and data handling. While they take some basic steps to protect their users from other companies' tracking practices, Google themselves intend to profit monetarily from the "free" email services they provide. Therefore, data about users is gathered stored, and processed for that purpose. Google makes its money from targeted marketing, based on data gathered from users of their "free" services. Therefore, potential users must decide--Gmail offers a robust feature set, reliable service, and does not charge money to individual users. In exchange for utilizing this service, users consent to Google gathering significant amounts of personal data, and monetizing that data through a variety of methods.[8][9][10]
This practice of offering "free" email services in exchange for collecting user data for purposes of sale or other monetization, is not unique to Google's Gmail. Companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft’s Outlook use similar profit models. However, there are other providers who use different profit models which do not involve the collection of personal data from users, such as Proton Mail and Tutanota.[8]
Categories: [Google]