If that's the author's objection, it's like the author never heard of Gmail.
https://developers.google.com/schemas/tutorials/google-now-c...
... but I know you were just being facetious. ;)
Honestly, as a developer I don't know if I agree with it or not. If I was in their shoes, it seems like the way to do it. They are honest in what they are doing, but I think its because they know people will forget sooner rather than later.
Furthermore, email was never secure to begin with. E2E encryption has finally been making its way to devices; this is a major setback for the effort.
... unless you're assuming "It's from Google, therefore everybody will be using it next week" or something. And if that happens, maybe people find the ability to have a third party sift their conversation data and integrate it against their other data to solve problems they have to be more useful than anonymity?
Are you suggesting the reason they read your email is for search? What about the ads they serve on the promotions tab? What about the fact that it can parse my travel plans and add it to my google calendar? There's a lot more than just search going on.
I also understand that even by using only Gmail, we too have allowed corporations into our lives but atleast it has not build habits in me of using technology for every single thing.