[OT] Google Privacy Policies (Was: Re: [ale] [OT] Google Apps for Domain + Overzealous Spam filtering?)

[John Wells]

----- "Michael B. Trausch" <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> John Wells, on 09/12/2007 01:04 PM said:
> > 
> > I don't have an answer, but I do have a question. We reviewed
> Google
> > Apps for our company's email, but couldn't get past the privacy
> > policy...in particular the fact that while your email will
> > (hopefully) be removed upon your own delete within 60 days...there
> is
> > no guarantee it will *ever* be removed from the off-line backups.
> > 
> > This, coupled with the fact that Google offers no extended privacy
> > policy for paying customers (we would've been paying a pretty big
> > price tag) made it a non-starter for us.
> > 
> > Where do you (and other ale'r) stand on this issue?
> > 
> 
> Having (re)read the privacy policies that they hold, I am not
> terribly
> bothered by them.  They are not perfect or ideal, but then again, I
</snip>

I agree with you for the most part. Free comes with strings. However, since, as a potential enterprise customer, we'd be paying $50/user/year, I feel less comfortable with things like this:

"You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems."

I also agree that, for the most part, Google has done the right thing and adhered to the don't be evil approach. However, this stopped being a guarantee the moment they became a public company...try as they might to deny it or prevent it, company values are ALWAYS trumped by shareholder value. I'd say you can trust Google, *until* it generates more revenue for them to give you reasons not to.

John