California’s State Senator, Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont), has written to Internet search engine company Google urging it to abandon certain proposed features for its upcoming Gmail service.
Among her greatest concerns is technology that Google has proposed for Gmail, which would see the firm, scan user’s e-mails so that context-sensitive ads can be placed within individual e-mails, according to news reports.
In late March, Google said it would launch Gmail — a service that would offer users 1 GB of free storage, more than 100 times the storage offered by other free services from Yahoo and Microsoft.
But in return for the extra storage, users would agree to let Google scan their incoming e-mail, and then deliver targeted ads based on keywords in the messages. For instance, a user receiving a message about a friend’s flu symptoms might also receive ads for cold and flu remedies.
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