No. That's not just evil, and most likely illegal, it's stupid too. It's too easy for something like that to leak, and the damage would be enormous.
So it seems important to come up with a technological solution to the problem of how to communicate without all of it being logged. It's a difficult problem because it's hard to get other people to actually use whatever you come up with. That's why I'm crossing my fingers that TextSecure's browser plugin will take off, because if it's as easy to use as email and as powerful as email, it could have a very tiny chance of becoming the next popular communications platform. At that point no one would have to trust any company to preserve privacy, which seems valuable.
EDIT: I'm confused why my comments were moved to the bottom of this thread, because they don't seem offtopic. For example, the second topmost comment is also about encryption: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731216
That's patently untrue. What are you basing that on besides your own paranoia?
Would it? The NSA is reading everything and I haven't seen see many changes. I think we as a society need to sit down and figure out if these services should be in the private domain or instead implemented in the public domain that matches with our values. We spend billions, why can't we spend a few to make an internet that doesn't spy on us.
I don't think I could stop using Google. I don't know what would make me stop.
Where is this public domain that you trust so much and why are they more honest that Google?
You piqued my interest, what would happen if they killed somebody? Probably whoever asked for it would get in trouble (unless they deleted the logs...), but I doubt I would or could stop using Google. We use web-search like a utility.
>>Where is this public domain that you trust so much
If it works or not is another story, but we have a de-jure mechanism for government accountability wherein nothing exists for corporations. We might be able to make a publicly accountable internet infrastructure, but there is no similar mandate for a corporation.
Considering the usual public reaction to that kind of thing I'm surprised it doesn't get mentioned more often.
>I've always wondered whether Google ever digs into communications in a situation where they're trying to decide whether to acquire a company. It seems like reading a company's email would be a reliable source of information about whether they're on a genuine trajectory or whether e.g. they're having trouble with their investors.
Now there are a range of ways that could happen, from Larry Page looking up the emails personally, to some middle manager involved in the deal getting their friend on the gmail team to unofficially take a peak to look for some specific thing. Things happening inside a company can happen in all sorts of ways that aren't official executive decisions.
Individuals motivations do not even have to be aligned with Google's interests[1]. Maybe they want to be able to better position themselves if the deal goes down the tubes, or get information about any employees at take over targets that might be going to replace them in their role. Internal politics at large corporations is endless. From the outsiders point of view the actual mechanism doesn't matter too much.
Also I think the situation where a sexual predator was attempting to coerce minors into sex is (or should be) a much more serious public scandal than an executive decision to look at the emails of a startup most people have never heard of and don't care about would be. I imagine many people would blame the startup for being foolish enough to use gmail and Google would deny it and it would all blow over in a few days.
What? No.
They saw the PR pouncing they were taking, so they hired a former judge to rubber stamp such things in the future, and had the gall to call it a "judicial process" (even though the guy is just a microsoft employee at this point).