Gmail, Google’s ‘spy email’, illegal in Europe – europasur.es (original link in Spanish) : The controversy with Gmail’s advertising system started almost from its inception.

The email system was and continues to be criticized since it uses Google’s AdSense to include contextual advertisement together with email messages, which means that it’s a ‘bot’, a type of software, which ‘reads’ email contents, violating user privacy.

Despite the fact that Google’s representatives indicate that no human has access to such communications, ‘Consumers in Action’ has won the first battle against Google for email privacy invasion. After their complain before the Spanish Agency of Data Protection, this entity has declared illegal the business model used for this email service.

It would be funny and counter-productive if Gmail was somehow shutdown in Europe. Frankly, I don’t see it happening. However, if it were to happen, I would be forced to transfer thousands of emails off from my Gmail account; with Gmail’s large storage capacity, I almost never delete an email.