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?
But the other cost is searchability, which is a pain for a search-based email system. I don't think many people use labels very much.