  urlLink Wired News: My Left Arm for a Gmail Account : "...In the earliest days of Gmail, only Google employees and their friends got the accounts. Now, more people have them, but there is still the impression that those who have invitations to share are either at Google or, at the very least, are looking for swap offers worthy of Google.
Pardi said she thinks that would mean 'the clever ones, where they would be somebody's slave. Not like, 'I'll trade you a hard drive. ' Those are kind of boring. ' Of course, one other aspect of Gmail has received a great deal of attention: The service automatically searches members' e-mails for keywords and then adds targeted advertisements to accompany the messages. Many privacy activists have raised questions about such a program. Michaels pooh-poohs such worries.
'I think the privacy concerns are overblown, really, and I think most people agree,' he said. 'As commercial e-mail services go, Gmail's extremely benign, and unless you're scared about evil e-mail-scanning robots, there's not much to worry about. ' In any case, the offers keep flooding in. Wednesday's best? A '70s-era gold couch, a week's worth of drinks in Barcelona, a goatee and 'sophistry bolstered by Hume, Berkeley and/or Kant. '" 
