[Quinn]

Yes I read a similar thing. In the Post a writer was criticizing the management's relative inexperience with business and their slogan, "don't be bad" or something to that effect. Frankly I still don't really understand how companies like Yahoo and Google can get by, giving away their product and surviving strictly on ad returns. On the other hand somehow spam persists and I really don't understand how anyone profits from that, so I guess anything is possible. And then again, email addresses are fairly cheap, and there are probably a few people out there loose with their credit card looking to decrease their mortgage and increase other things.

Google has a lot of competitors as well. There are new, relatively unknown email providers offering a gig of space now, and other companies cloning Google's search systems. Searching is a big business and apparently other companies are using Google and refining its results to provide links more relevant to specific groups, such as the financial community, etc.

As far as security goes, I have no idea, but I'm sure their just as secure as any other public data host, which probably isn't very. I am sure if someone knew there was particularly sensitive information contained within the Gmail servers, they could find a way to access it. Of course anything can be reverse engineered... the only real security in these terms is not being online at all.