Caterina’s Smart, but Google Talk/Gmail Integration Rocks

posted at 1:03 am
on Feb. 11, 2006

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Background for those who are not class-A geeks: Google has an instant messenger service called Google Talk.  It isn’t a very popular chat service.  But Google just integrated it completely into its Gmail service so that a) you can chat and email from the same browser window, and b) it saves your entire chat history and makes it searchable.

Caterina thinks this is AWFUL and might even break a LAW.  I responded in her comments, but thought I could do better on my own blog.

1) How does this differ from everyone who records your chats with iChat and then backs them up to .Mac?  Or who copy and pastes from a chat window and then emails then to someone with Hotmail?  It’s hardly a new threat, and anyone who’s surprised that IM chats can be, and often are, saved? Well, that’s just a mistaken perception that this will help change.

2) Google does MORE than iChat, because you can go off the record with me in Google Talk, but in iChat, I can record the entire chat regardless of what you want.  So Google’s implementation offers, in some ways, more privacy, or at least more privacy options, or at least shows that it’s more privacy positive or something. Not less.

3) I can clearly remember my father not wanting to get a credit card so that the government couldn’t track his purchases. Now, of course, he has a credit card, and every Law and Order has the government looking at credit card records.  Convenience sometimes trumps privacy.

4) Google may be a scary place to store all sorts of personal information that the government can go grab.  But if you’re that concerned about privacy—don’t use IM!  Don’t use email!  Meet in person, use a land-line phone and talk in generalities.  To be concerned about IM privacy is to be concerned that no one in a crowded restaurant hear about your abortion or your plot to kidnap the pope.  Don’t speak privately via an easily intercepted medium!

5) Lastly, this feature is so cool, so amazingly cool, that I’m going to be trying to switch as many pals as possible over to Google Talk.  Frankly, the idea that all my chats can be stored forever, searchable, is so amazingly useful it blows my mind.  And the fact that there’s a browser-based chat integrated with my mail is also superb (Yes, AOL’s AIM has a Web client, but it’s not integrated with the email, and there’s so many times that a conversation needs to leap from IM to email and back again.  It’s a total natural.)

So if you want to Google Talk me, I’m .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), standing by.

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Keywords: aim  •  caterina  •  eavesdropping  •  gmail  •  google talk  •  im  •  privacy  •  spying

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In the Company of Strangers

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