Google email/domain hosting - WAS Re: test

[agabrielpop at home.tzo.org (Anthony Gabrielson)]

Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> I am curious, from this group, why people trust google to host your domain
> and email.   From a safety and security standpoint, if you mail hosted on
> your own home machine, you know it is as secure as possible.   There are
> some relatively "trusted" hosting providers, such as pair.com, that people
> recommend.   How might hosting your domain and mail on google differ from
> hosting it somewhere else?   One ansewr could be "why not trust them?"
>
> I do keep in mind that many host provider's financial base and primary
> goal is to host your domain.  Google's is not.
>
> I'd be interested in people's points of view.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Scott
>   
IMHO, I think everything sent to the Internet should be considered 
public domain by the sender including any and all email - I do not 
expect nor will I receive any privacy.  When I send an email it is 
forced to go through several routers, owned by Comcast and other 
companies,  so they still "see" what I sent no matter how much privacy I 
would like.  If I really do want privacy then I need to find an 
encryption algorithm I trust, unfortunately if they want to crack that 
they still can as a function clock cycles.  So with that in mind I have 
informally ranked my data and how personal it is to me.  If it is a 
little personal I can encrypt before I send, very personal its sneaker 
net.  If the info isn't personal, then in my opinion why waste a lot of 
time protecting it.  I began hosting my email during my freshman year of 
college, almost ten years ago now (Gee that makes me feel old...), to 
learn a bit about networks, services, UNIX, and force myself to be 
reliable.  Well I have done a decent job over the years, and my new 
problem is email being accepted by other domains.  When I saw the Google 
beta I thought this was a great time to perhaps still have my own 
domain, actually sub domain, and not have to think of the other stuff.  
The only thing I really want to worry about on my computer is the 
information, and I will protect accordingly.  I think the day has come 
to turn my Sun Blade 100 back into a Linux machine, from OpenBSD, 
without wondering how long it will take to get all of my services 
running properly again as it will probably only run one, ssh.

On another note I also look forward to GDrive.  I think thats also a 
great idea for the same reasons.  I see no problem with Google brokering 
data, I see that problem being intelligently keeping data that is to 
personal off of it.

Anthony