Ooh, keep those intrusive adverts away

By Mike Magee: Wednesday 14 April 2004, 06:42

A CALIFORNIA state senator wants Google’s GMail banned because people who opt into the free service should not have their mail scanned and appropriate ads inserted.
Senator Liz "Laguna" Figueroa, a Democrat, told old British wire Reuters that having ads in your email was a potential invasion of privacy and like "having a bill board in your home".

She obviously doesn't watch the Goggle Box (TV) much.

The fact that signing up to GMail is not compulsory and people who don’t want ads in their email don’t have to buy it, does not seem to have entered her head. She is busy penning legislation to block Google from going ahead.

Well, it gives her something to do with the massive amount of time she obviously has on her hands.

The service promises a gigabyte of extra mail storage in return for sticking ads on the bottom of emails.

Figueroa, wrote California's "Do-Not-Call" law that allows people to block telemarketing calls. She is only writing the anti-Google law, apparently, because co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, never replied to an email in which she laid out her "concerns". Google said it got the email and was "taking it into consideration".

The product is already in hot water in Europe because it may break our own stringent data-protection laws.