Google’s understanding of the non-privacy of e-mail applies not only to Gmail users who send e-mail, but also e-mail users on other services that send to Gmail.

Its approach to e-mail is, of course, only the tip of its non-privacy iceberg. The company has made it very clear that it intends to know what users want before they do, as its director of engineering Ray Kurzweil has recently said.

This involves, for instance, the cross referencing of everything Google knows about a user from any source, which is permitted by a major privacy policy change the company adopted last year. […]