[Nottingham] Google morphing into a pan-dimensional "facebook"?

[Jason Irwin]

On 26/01/12 22:32, Martin wrote:
> All for a beautiful harmony? Or a tranquil hegemony? Is this going
> scarily intrusive?
I think they are just trying to move all the various policies into one
and to merge systems to save on resources. and Google has always been
scarily intrusive.  When I was buying this place I did think "Do I want
Google scanning emails to/from the lawyer?"  Explaining PGP would have
been too much hassle (and I doubt Outlook can use it).

The only option I can see is to run one's own mail server.
And status.net instance.
And ownCloud.
And...aww heck, just put a server farm in the shed!
This, of course, raises a big issue; mail servers etc are non-trivial to
install properly.  One needs a domain name.  Firewalls.  Spam filtering
yadda-yadda-yadda.
So if makes sense to "out source" this to some company/person.  Bingo,
back to square one.  Well, maybe square two.

Oh, and for those of us on Virgin Media if you use you virginmail
account; that's Google.
And here's a thing I discovered - if you change Virgin accounts your
email address remains "locked" to the old account and can never be used
again.  You have to give Virgin a totally new email address to get bills
etc. as it is used for sign-on and they do not accept "+" in the
address.  PITA.

-- 
Jason Irwin