The Price of Free: How Gmail Trained Us to Trade Privacy

Gmail's Privacy Trade-Off: A Look Back at Its Influential Model

When Gmail burst onto the scene on April 1, 2004, it revolutionized the web-based email service landscape, previously dominated by Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. With its promise of faster service, automatic conversation grouping, integrated search functions, and an unprecedented 1GB of personal cloud storage, Gmail was a game-changer. However, this leap forward came with a caveat that would shape the online world—in the primal exchange of the internet age, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.