A California state senator yesterday said she was drafting legislation to block Google's free e-mail service, Gmail, because it would place advertising in personal messages after searching them for key words.
"We think it's an absolute invasion of privacy. It's like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home," Senator Liz Figueroa, a Democrat from Fremont, California, told Reuters. "We are asking them [Google] to rethink the whole product."
In late March, Google announced plans to launch Gmail - a service that would offer users one gigabyte 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's technology scan their incoming e-mail, then deliver targeted ads based on key words 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.
Gmail is now being tested with a limited number of users. Privacy advocates are attacking Gmail even before its formal launch, and the company faces heavy opposition in Europe, where privacy laws are stricter than they are in the United States.
European groups recently lodged a complaint with British authorities, charging that Gmail may violate Europe's privacy laws because it stores messages where users cannot permanently delete them.
Europe's privacy protection laws give consumers the right to retain control over their communications.