Is it an email conspiracy?

So I don’t want you to think that this here story I’m about to unfold, nor my reaction to it, are informed by any kind of agenda.

Also, please bear in mind that I’m not the most technical of people, and this all may be three-year-old news to my value-adding, ahead-of-the-curve, bleeding edge Wharf brethren.

But here it is. Lately, hotmail has stopped working at work. Again, it’s nothing sinister, they’ve changed the browsers they like and we haven’t changed anything.

Now, from time to time I like to keep in touch with a small group of idiots via a group email we have, and from time to time I want to do that at work. It is often even work-related.

So, unable to do this any more, I switched to Google’s version: gmail. All went well. It’s a bit confusing to a halfwit like me, but I got the hang of it.

I like the clean whiteness of it all, and a Google mail address seems that bit more professional than a hotmail one, for some reason.

Today, I have the day off. And in the inevitable hour of procrastination before settling down to hunt for column gold, I chatted idly with the aforementioned email fools.

A mutual friend is getting married. One of us is going to visit the other in Winchester. One of us has tickets to Sigur Ros at Ally Pally, and would anyone else like to go?

Normal stuff. And my day continued. I played a couple of songs on my computer. I made another cup of tea. I settled down to start writing. I went back to email.

And there at the top of the inbox, above the latest inane missives, was an advert for sigurros.com. And I refreshed the screen, and there was an advert for wedding dresses.

Am I being hopelessly naive to be freaked out by this? They’re reading our emails and advertising at us for what we talk about in private conversations.

They have commodified banter. For me, that’s some scary stuff. What’s next? Will Google Earth be reading my to-do list and texting me reminders to shop at Morrisons? Will it notice my mate is walking a bit funny and send her a soothing lotion?

So I had to. I went to sigurros.com, and it knows I’ve gone there.

It knows I respond to it. Its little algorithms and servers are processing information about how I react to emails and music and adverts.

Does nobody else find this disturbing? Am I just having another Area 51 episode? It doesn’t feel like it.
Google’s memorable mission statement is Don’t Be Evil. Getting pretty close, there fellas.