Privacy advocates are concerned that there’s one big flaw with Google Inc.’s free e-mail service: The company plans to read the messages. The Internet search firm insists that it needs to know what’s in the e-mails that pass through its system — so that they can be sprinkled with advertisements Google thinks are relevant. After all, revenue from those targeted ads will pay for the Gmail service, which began a limited test on Thursday, offering up to 500 times as much e-mail storage as competitors Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The electronic letters won’t be read by Google employees; computers will handle that chore. Nonetheless, the spectre of seeing an ad for an antacid beside a message from a friend complaining about stomach pain is enough to make some people nervous about the e-mail service.‘‘There will undoubtedly be some folks that will see this and freak out,’’ said Ray Everett-Church, chief privacy officer for TurnTide Inc., an anti-spam company. After reading the privacy policy on the Gmail website on Thursday, consumer-rights groups began sending complaints to the Mountain View, California, company and preparing to warn users to stay away. The consternation caught Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and president of products, off guard. ‘‘I’m very surprised that there are these kinds of questions,’’ he said. There are several reasons. For starters, spam-filtering programs routinely scour e-mails for telltale words such as ‘‘Viagra,’’ and companies monitor the message traffic of employees on corporate networks. But e-mail is a more personal form of communication, making targeted advertisements feel intrusive, said Chris Hoofnagle of Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. Consumer advocates are also worried about the potential for Google to link Gmail users to their Internet searches. Google records the Internet addresses of the computers that request each of the Web searches the company performs. But it hasn’t had any information to link addresses to people and learn who, for example, is searching for ‘‘Janet Jackson halftime show’’. Page wouldn’t say whether Google planned to link Gmail users to their Web search queries. ‘‘It might be useful for us to know that information.’’ But Page added: ‘‘We want people in the world to be able to trust Google and we view that as an important part of our business.’’ —(LAT-WP)
