Google Mail invitations? Any takers?

[Joseph Murphy]

>>  ...When
>> Google takes gmail out of beta and starts charging for it they'll make
>> billions....
>
> Does this mean that those who grab the free-gmail will enjoy no bills 
> when
> They start charging?
> Or...?

I think worrying about Google charging end users for GMail is barking 
up the wrong tree. With two gigabytes of storage space and a rapidly 
expanding user base, what they've got is a data mining goldmine. (A 
gold data mine?) They're going to know more about their users than 
anybody else, including things like the relationship of mail keywords 
to advertisement click-through. Imagine the possibility for real-time 
ad sales based on trends in aggregate email keywords. "Hi, this is 
Google. We have 2 million new emails today using the name "Tom Brady." 
Shouldn't you be trying to sell these people a jersey?" Imagine what 
happens when they start basing ads off of your whole email history 
instead of just per message. Google could be looking at the recovery of 
viable advertising-based services on the web.

(I also think that they'll discover a market for people who'll pay for 
4 or more gigabytes... but that, like Yahoo and Hotmail, most people 
won't.)

Meanwhile, libraries sit on huge amounts of data and rarely make any 
attempt to use it in the aggregate, out of concern for individualism 
(and privacy). Why don't we use search logs or circulation records to 
do some Reader's Advisory on the fly? Why are our catalogs so hard to 
personalize? And why are these supposedly "individual" decisions so 
often made by a small group of librarians for the whole user community? 
(I was stunned to find a little public library in West Virginia which 
allows individual users to turn "borrowing history" on or off as they 
like... I'd never heard of a library which trusted the end user to make 
that decision before.)

I'm not saying we should necessarily "become Google." But I am saying 
that we don't always leverage all of our assets, and that should be a 
conscious choice, not an implicit one.

Joe Murphy
Librarian and Technology Consultant
Library and Information Services
Kenyon College
murphyjm at kenyon.edu
740/427-5120