The New York Times reports today that very soon, users of Gmail Plus will be able to send emails to anyone, even if they don't have the recipient's email address. According to the Times Google just announced this on January 9. It is not a proposal or anything hypothetical; it's an accomplished fact, "the latest move by Google to weave its social network into all of its products and to strongly push users to sign up for Google Plus.". The new "feature" will be On by default, but supposedly Gmail users will be able to turn it Off in the "Settings" dropdown of Gmail.
I'm wondering how much money the various mass marketers paid Google to implement this. In other times this invasion of privacy would prompt thousands of people to defect from Google, but we've all become so used to "sharing" every bit of our selves that Google apparently decided there was money to be made, with little downside risk. We all need to watch our emails carefully, and then attend to our Settings (opt out), if we don't want to drown in a tsumani of mass marketing. Once those mailing floodgates are open, I think all of us, whether we're Gmail Plus users or not, will soon be on everybody's mass mailing list, spending a lot of time trying to separate our legitimate email from the marketings. I guess we also need to be thinking about alternatives to Gmail. I like Gmail a lot - but I sure don't like spam. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gmail-Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gmail-users. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
