• jqp

    Let’s be real for a second. Google’s business model is built around monetizing user privacy. In other words, their services aren’t really *free*, you pay by surrendering your privacy. Maybe this works for some people … but not for everyone.

    The best way to maintain some reasonable measure of privacy is to pay real money for service. By charging you a fee, the service provider becomes subject to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and other privacy laws. If a paid service provider does what Google and Facebook and others routinely do with your data, they could be prosecuted for illegal wiretapping.

  • http://www.trustworks.com Aaron Sylvan

    There’s a definite conflict of interest between the university (which wants great email at low cost) and Google (which wants user data for other purposes such as marketing). Considering the price of email, I can see little justification for any enterprise valuing privacy to use a free service. My own company, TrustWorks, has found that as long as a product *brings value*, schools and businesses are perfectly happy to pay for the products they use. Email is just a commodity; no reason to sacrifice privacy to get free access to something that is nearly-free from other sources.

    -Aaron Sylvan
    Chief Executive Officer, TrustWorks