Jim_Gunn

I wouldn't worry about Google employees snooping your email like you & Dave jokingly suggested. But there are several other potential pitfalls to using web based email and cloud storage. For one you risk losing your email archive if the remote copy disappears for whatever reason including simple drive & backup failure or corruption. You also have no access to your email during a temporary local loss of your network connection. There is also the possibility of hacking by known individuals targeting your account or random individuals targetting many accounts and Google itself. I even recall a virus that affected MySpace mail a few years ago that selected random emails from your mailboxes and forwarded them to other random emails in your contact page.

Of course with this you are also giving up other elements of your privacy if you are now constantly logged into your Google accounts, so that they are now collecting data on you as an individual including your emails, your web searches, your physical location plus contacts and calendar. I do use some of Google's services including the search engine, Google analytics, Google documents and now this Android smartphone. I just don't feel like putting every one of my eggs in their basket. If Microsoft came up with a Windows smartphone with Evo 4G specs, a user friendly interface, and fast processor, I would certainly be wide open to giving that a go next year. I like the Evo 4G for a lot of reasons, but joining the Google collective without questioning the wisdom of it isn't necessarily one of them.