Well, due to my immense popularity in the blogging community, Google offered me a GMail account (ok, ok, I begged a friend who knew a friend who worked at Google J).

There are several things that struck me about the GMail interface that were pleasant.  Of note are the keyboard shortcuts that make working with email a “clickless” event (and for those of you that used/use “vi”, you’ll find the commands quite intuitiveJ).  There are other nice touches that make Gmail a pleasure to work with.  Even the “advertising area” is unobtrusive.  Speaking of which, I tried to deliberately bait Gmail by sending a message to my account with words in sentences that would trigger the advertising banners (Iraq, Digital Cameras, “Send flowers”, Viagara).  It didn’t bite on them.  I’m guessing they don’t have that part turned on yet, but I’m also guessing that it might create a unique “Google challenge” – people writing notes to each other to see what kind of ads they can trigger on the side.

And, of course, there’s the privacy issue.  Personally, I’m not worried about it.  Google offers GMail with very clear terms and conditions, and has so far proven to be a trustworthy source.  Not in the sense of a “Better Business Bureau” kind of seal, I mean the kind of trust you have with the US Post Office (or whatever federal postal system is in your country).  The point is the Google has a strong enough ethics policy and up-front set of published privacy standards that I regard them as a trustworthy place to store my email.  When you think about it, we engage in many similar exchanges on a day-to-day basis, where we put varying levels of trust in people, sometimes even with complete strangers (giving your credit card to a waiter, for instance.  Although that can be regarded as a “trust by proxy”, since that person represents the business establishment that you are dining in).  I don’t trust Google because I know how “secure” their computers are, or how many digital certificates they have.  I trust Google because of prior experience with them and having a relatively decent understanding of their leadership’s moral value system. The point is that trust is ultimately a human condition.  Part of me would like to believe that when Microsoft bloggers, like me, put a human face on this multi-billion dollar corporation, we are doing things that help address the “human condition” of trust in Microsoft.  Hopefully, you feel the same way too J