I've been hearing so much mixed information about this California bill from Senator Figueroa Liz — that it would destroy Gmail, that Google was happy with it — so I decided to take a look at the so-called Gmail bill myself. I must say, given all of this controversy, I was very pleased with what I read.

The bill apparently does not restrict Gmail from providing its advertisement service. Rather, it simply makes sure that such communication services don't abuse the information that they have. I doubt Google was originally planning on incorporating anything into their e-mail service that this bill puts a ban on.

The one goof that I feel the bill still has is the issue with post-deletion data retention. I still feel that the lawmakers don't understand the real issue behind Google's inability to delete the messages immediately, which is that backups typically aren't updated when content is updated. If they were, then that could lead to potential problems and data loss. I am confident that Gmail deletes messages from the servers as the user wishes, and that the backups simply remain for some time in case a mistake was made. The sections of the bill dealing with deletion of e-mails, as of 2004-5-25 according to the linked document above, are yet obviously unfinished, with the exact number of days for deletion delay, as well as the actual definition of Deletes an electronic communication, left blank.

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Rayne, please stop abusing posting privileges.