Google buys Postini for $625 million

Continuing in its quest for trying to beat Microsoft in the office category, Google made another big buy, buying a 'communications security' firm, Postini, for $625 million. What does Positini do ? Well, it lets corporations set security rules for all communication happening inside the company, such as e-mail, instant messenger and browsing activities. Such policies are necessary for companies, be it to maintain a track of communications for legal purposes, to filter e-mail for spam and viruses, or to prevent employees from accessing certain type of information.

When corporations adopt Postini's software, they can access, filter and impose restrictions on their employees' e-mail, instant messaging and Web habits. And because Google's moving into corporations -- it's fighting Microsoft for the right to rule over our cubicles -- helping firms keep an eye on their workers is an important goal.
There's a useful purpose to these corporate lockdowns, of course. Google notes that companies are under regulations to preserve all their data; the SEC is going to want to know if you discussed setting up Cayman Island shell corporations over AIM. So companies that are itching to use Google's office apps -- Gmail, Google documents, Google Talk, etc. -- can't switch over until the software can be made to obey such archiving rules. Companies are also targets of espionage, they're subject to leaks, and they suffer losses due to viruses and other network attacks. By keeping workers' computers pinned down and monitored, Postini can mitigate all these risks, it says.

Postini is not meant for the employee, it is meant for the corporations to better enforce policies. This acquisition by Google will help make Google's apps (such as Google Pack, Google Talk, etc) be more usable in an office context, and give them a realistic chance of competing with Microsoft's products, Google's prime goal.

Privacy protection for email

There have been a host of privacy debates that have happened in recent times, essentially between the Bush administration and privacy advocates. The need to protect the US from terrorist attack, and including the need to detect such attacks before they happen, seems to have guided the US to break previous privacy protocols, and demand its right to investigate and demand information through snooping, wire-tapping and numerous other sources. The debate is over privacy seekers claiming that these measures are excessive and the Government is seeking excessive authority.
A lot of these measures have turned up in court, with people challenging some decision or the other of the Bush administration; in a recent judgement, the case of email was debated and a decision made, against the administration. The court has ruled that investigators in a Ohio fraud investigation had over-stepped their authority in getting emails from a internet services provider without a warrant, and that citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy of their emails stored in web email service providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail.
Even though this judgement was rendered by the Sixth Circuit federal court, if used by other federal courts, it could set a precedent.

Monday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio held that Internet users had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of personal e-mails being stored by Internet service providers such as Yahoo! and Google.
"It goes without saying that like the telephone earlier in our history, e-mail is an ever-increasing mode of private communication, and protecting shared communications through this medium is as important to Fourth Amendment principles today as protecting telephone conversations has been in past," the court said.
At the same time, the ruling could make it more difficult for government investigators to gather information on suspected criminals or terrorists, said Kerr. Investigators would have to gather more incriminating facts about a suspect before they could read personal e-mails.

Fundamentally, email has not been debated in the past like this decision, and whether this decision stays, or is over-turned by the full panel of the 6th circuit, or by the Supreme Court, will decide what laws Congress needs to make in this regard. And it is quite obvious that Congress needs to make more laws in this regard, since the whole question of email, privacy and the need of investigation, especially in the context of preventing terrorist attacks is a wide open question that needs more discussion. If this decision is not over-turned, it will set a benchmark to Congress in terms of what it can provide, and where it needs to draw the line.