I mean, this seems just straight amazing, right? Am I missing something?
Obviously Google is pivoting on a number of fronts; if this enjoys wide adoption (unlikely as that may seem at the moment), they'll have to basically retreat from email content analytics, right?
Not just searchability, auto-categorization, and anti-spam as well. I would view it through the lens of putting the power of choice in the hands of the user.
It allows people to make the choice of whether they value privacy more than usability, or, it allows fine-grained control -- end-to-end for messages you care to keep private, but no encryption for the mails you don't care about, but want searchability (mailing lists, notification emails, package tracking, etc)
You could always use white-listing for encrypted e-mails - refuse all encrypted e-mail not from people on your contacts list or people whose keys you've signed, etc.
Considerable value of the search functionality can be retained by restricting it to metadata like originator which needs to be accessible for delivery to work anyway.
For me at least, this would be completely unacceptable as a search replacement, as I frequently search old message bodies. Not to mention that there's no reason originator can't be encrypted at rest, at least in theory..
However, based on the experience of desktop search, I think pure client side search would probably have reasonable initialization time and space overhead, and would certainly make searches faster, at least compared to my current Gmail experience.
For me at least, this would be completely unacceptable as a search replacement, as I frequently search old message bodies. ... However, based on the experience of desktop search, I think pure client side search would probably have reasonable initialization time and space overhead, and would certainly make searches faster, at least compared to my current Gmail experience.
Just install Mozilla Thunderbird and use IMAP. Client side search, all your devices sync via IMAP, no ads, and free software.
FWIW, I've evaluated email clients from time to time, but haven't found anything I like enough to replace Gmail. I haven't tried Thunderbird for years because I don't want to use a client without conversation view, and Thunderbird doesn't seem to offer it as a core feature; I could try one of the extensions for it, but I'm suspicious it won't work well. Also, I'm not sure I want to start using a product that's been on life support for two years. However, I admit these are relatively small turnoffs, so perhaps I should give Thunderbird a spin some time...
> I don't want to use a client without conversation view, and Thunderbird doesn't seem to offer it as a core feature
Actually it does, sort of: Right click on you@example.com, choose Search Messages, then Save as Search Folder, then "Match all Messages" and, in "Select the folders to search", Inbox and Sent.
They make most of their money on Google search anyway - and with just the queries, no personal context as far as I know. No privacy issues arise here, in fact, it would probably work in incognito mode just as well.
Are there any numbers on how much profit they actually make on Google Mail?
The emails that it is useful to do analytics on and the emails that it is useful to encrypt aren't the same emails. The valuable emails to analyze for a company who sells targeted advertising are the transactional emails - booking confirmations, purchase receipts, etc so they can build up a profile of what your habits are, and it is incredibly unlikely that anybody is going to start encrypting those. The email you send your boss updating him on the latest project status, or a personal email to your parents don't have a lot of marketing value.
But these are _exactly_ the things I, the user, want encrypted. I would probably even stop doing business with vendors that did not encrypt their transactional communications with me.
You don't need to analyze content on the Gmail server to get content analysis to the Gmail server (if that is necessary at all).
If Google's primary intent is to make sure that users keep their email encrypted completely, smart clients (like browsers and mobile apps) can do what Gmail servers can't.
Look at what the Google-provided Gmail Offline extension does. Now remember that End-to-End is just an extension, like Gmail Offline, except that this one also decrypts email on the client. Once email is decrypted on the client, analysis can be performed (like indexing the email for search), and that analysis can be sent to the Gmail servers or used to perform ad calls directly (I'm not saying that Google is doing this, but technologically all of this is pretty easy given everything else already done).
My bet: End-to-End encryption, not even automatic but through the use of a plugin, will only appeal to the niche of people who are concerned about that and may not be using GMail. For the most part of its user base, nothing will change.
Things will start to move for the majority when end-to-end encryption can be done directly in the protocol, by default, i.e anything but email.
I felt the same as you, until I read that Google is going to manage your keys or handle the cert. authority part (however that ends up). Then I realized their end game, which is to control end to end encryption adoption to keep another vendor from controlling it.
It's the same strategy google did with the browser and mobile. They don't want to be locked out of this play, because if they don't have influence then they may potentially loose all sorts of profiling data on you. So, with Google controlling the adoption they can ensure mechanisms to provide services around your encrypted data to benefit you (while also serving google by letting them into your encrypted life).
Unless I'm reading this wrong, according to the End-to-End docs, it looks like keys are kept in a "Key Directory", and that Google will run one Key Directory, but you can use whatever Key Directory you want. I haven't seen evidence that Google will have any access to your unencrypted data.
Obviously Google is pivoting on a number of fronts; if this enjoys wide adoption (unlikely as that may seem at the moment), they'll have to basically retreat from email content analytics, right?