Steve Balmer, not exactly the shy and retiring type, has been having a go at Google again. With a fine eye for a good headline he basically said that Google reads your email – while of course those nice people at Hotmail wouldn’t dream of such a thing.

Now regular readers of this blog (probably Mrs Trellis of North Wales) will know that I’m not exactly unconcerned about online privacy matters in general and Google’s desire to index everything everywhere in particular, but even I wouldn’t go quite that far.

Naturally no-one is sitting reading your mail – in this case specifically Gmail – but what they are doing is parsing through it to find subject matter to suggest adverts to display. How detailed that parsing is only Google know; and whether the CIA or whoever would be able to get personal information about you if they obtained access to the records is another open question. Since I wouldn’t use a Gmail account under any circumstances anyway it doesn’t worry me unless I’m communicating with someone who does.

From the search point of view the important thing to realise is that essentially Google isn’t really a search company – it’s an advertising company, and it’s increasingly THE advertising company. And it’ll use any data it can to push more, and more targeted, adverts at more and more people. The days when it was a simple search engine company with a simple interface and low revenue streams are long gone.