As a consumer, I think Google is on the money when they are providing such a huge storage capacity. And of course searching through several messages will become significantly easier.

However, as an advertiser, I'm scratching my head a bit. About what you ask dear readers? Well, the destiny of Ad Words and contextual advertising have gotten me worried. We pay fees for the Google system to scan for popular words and serve up relevant ads. To me, this is one of the most efficient forms of advertising today. And let's face it; it's cool.

My personal email however, is a different story. It is too close to home. I have big time privacy concerns here. Do you? Think about this for a moment. What's the first thing you do in order to obtain a free email address? You offer up your first and last name. Sometimes your address or zip code. I don't want my name correlated with anyone's search.

The other thing I was thinking about is Spam. I want my email client to search for and warn me of Spam prior to categorizing messages in any way. I'm not sure if Gmail does this.

The biggest worry I have is the mainstream user. My guess is that most of them either won't be aware of privacy issues or just frankly not care. I guess the newsflash is good old Microsoft. They are already scanning email. Microsoft serves up ads and pop ups all over it's free email. Do users mind? Do they lower the bar of expectation when it's "free?" Do they raise their tolerance level for acceptance of intrusiveness because it's free? Damn right they do.

Seems to me this is a huge threat to those who are using Hotmail and Yahoo! mail. In fact, I went to Yahoo! to type in mail. The first result said, "Did you mean mail?" Will Google be ubiquitous in email as well as search?