What news? We heard that they have automated indexers that use the info for showing you ads, but that wasn't "news", it was part of the ToS from beginning.
There was an incident where Microsoft went through a hotmail user's email to investigate an internal leak. I'm not aware of any similar incidents at Google.
Here you go: http://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/ In brief, a sex predator was working at Google and accessing the email accounts, GTalk and Google Voice accounts of minors to manipulate them.
Considering the usual public reaction to that kind of thing I'm surprised it doesn't get mentioned more often.
When people say that a company did something, it usually means that it was an executive decision, not the unauthorized actions of a single employee. It'd be like saying that the NSA divulged its own secrets, just because Snowden was their employee.
>I've always wondered whether Google ever digs into communications in a situation where they're trying to decide whether to acquire a company. It seems like reading a company's email would be a reliable source of information about whether they're on a genuine trajectory or whether e.g. they're having trouble with their investors.
Now there are a range of ways that could happen, from Larry Page looking up the emails personally, to some middle manager involved in the deal getting their friend on the gmail team to unofficially take a peak to look for some specific thing. Things happening inside a company can happen in all sorts of ways that aren't official executive decisions.
Individuals motivations do not even have to be aligned with Google's interests[1]. Maybe they want to be able to better position themselves if the deal goes down the tubes, or get information about any employees at take over targets that might be going to replace them in their role. Internal politics at large corporations is endless. From the outsiders point of view the actual mechanism doesn't matter too much.
Also I think the situation where a sexual predator was attempting to coerce minors into sex is (or should be) a much more serious public scandal than an executive decision to look at the emails of a startup most people have never heard of and don't care about would be. I imagine many people would blame the startup for being foolish enough to use gmail and Google would deny it and it would all blow over in a few days.
And it's not true that "nothing happened" in that case. Microsoft was publicly beaten up a bit, and then changed their policy to say they will no longer do that.
> Microsoft was publicly beaten up a bit, and then changed their policy to say they will no longer do that.
What? No.
They saw the PR pouncing they were taking, so they hired a former judge to rubber stamp such things in the future, and had the gall to call it a "judicial process" (even though the guy is just a microsoft employee at this point).
