14 DAY TRIAL // The famous Gmail might be shut down as the German authorities promoted a law that forces email providers to record personal information about the registered users. Basically, Google would be forced to store sensitive details about the consumers and, every time it is required, it must comply and offer them to the authorities. As the search giant is currently involved into an important battle for the users' privacy, the Mountain View leaders warned that Gmail German might be shut down in a move meant to avoid the recently promoted law.
Google Blogoscoped reported that the search giant wants to offer only anonymous accounts, a plan that disagrees with the law promoted by the authorities. "Many users around the globe make use of this anonymity to defend themselves from spam, or government repression of free speech ... If the web community won't trust us with handling their data with great care, we'll go down in no time," Peter Fleischer from Google said according to the same source.
"A potential closure of Gmail Germany would be extremely dangerous for the Mountain View company's evolutions because it would affect the entire image of the search giant, not only the mail service. If Google indeed stop their email service in the sense that no one will be able to access their mails anymore, they might as well close all local subsidiaries, and Mountain View can go ahead and forget this market - because they'd destroy all user trust from one day to another," Jens Minor from the German Google Watch Blog concluded according to Phillip Lenssen.
In the past, Google encountered several difficulties concerning the mail solution but, until now, it managed to face them and let Gmail evolve. The mail service was recently upgraded from the private beta level to a public beta product, allowing the users to register for free without any invitation.