I'm not sure that harvesting is such a big issue here, Google already harvest data from your email and everything else. If everyone used gmail they would be perfectly happy with the status quo but a lot of the world has moved on from email.
I think what Google are attempting here is to add social and intelligent assistant capabilities to email so preserve and even claw back the user base which is leaking to social systems and to smart systems. Their business is being your communication channel and I'd expect they would be fairly agnostic about the format. They are simply playing to their strengths, growing out of their massive email user base, and leveraging their big data and intelligent systems to make a better email for the *typical* user. Personally, I love unmediated or - self mediated - email but it is too much for most people. It is easy to have the signal swamped by the noise in email unless you actively manage it. I'm happy to put a little time and I know how to. Most people don't. The simple systems of the early net are becoming niche products just like the twin tub washing machine. It was cheap and reliable but new models do a lot more. Intelligent systems have benefits and costs. The downside of using Inbox for me would be the additional junk that Google would think I'm interested in. I'm pretty selective about my information sources and know where to go to find things that I want. However, if they can tune the system to be smart rather than intrusive I think will they succeed with a lot of people. It's fairly obvious to me that embedded intelligence will continue increase over time. We are clearly in the prototype era. Hitting the sweet spot that aids rather than hinders, balances automation with user control, and doesn't subsume users needs to corporate objectives, in a system that supports different types of users with different levels of digitality is a Big Ask. Jim _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
