Facebook Gmail, Hotmail & Yahoo Competitor in the Works, to Breach Privacy of Millions of Worldwide Users Forever?

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Facemail? Mailbook? Facebook Mail? Project Titan? With over 500 million subscribers Mark Zuckerberg could call this service anything he likes, and it will surely get popular. But considering the various Facebook privacy twists and turns we’ve witnessed in the recent years, should we trust Facebook with our emails?

Facebook will have another, probably non-Facebook-phone-related-but-similarly-boring event on November 15, just like the one we just saw a few days ago. People say the new event is centered around Facebook’s Gmail-killer, that’s right, that’s what people seem to call it. And the invitation above seems to indicate exactly a form of correspondence between people.

Now, unless Facebook is going to open it’s own post office, we’re looking at a web-based email that should compete not against Gmail and kill it in the process, but against Hotmail and Yahoo too, also two important email providers.

Google isn’t perfect either, and we’ve seen it breach a bunch of privacy rules either on purpose or by mistake so far, so you can certainly argue that, from that point of view, Facebook and Google have disappointed us equally in the recent past.

Not to mention that both companies make lots of money from advertising streams. So if you hate your Gmail account being cluttered with all these ads then imagine your future Facebook Mail experience. Even more ads for you to “enjoy” while going through your messaging routines.

Gmail on the other hand can be a powerful email solution even for businesses and I am surely a fan of its various tools that make my emailing a lot easier, and I do tend to send out a lot of emails. Will Facebook manage to match, and surpass that user-friendliness that Gmail has to offer?

Well, think of it this way, even if it doesn’t go viral overnight, Facebook Mail will probably be successful. After all we already have a basic emailing system inside Facebook, we call it the Wall; oh no, wait, that’s the public messaging system. But yes, there is a mini email client available in Facebook and it’s only logical that it will grow into something more complicated than that.

The question is, will we trust Facebook with our john.doe@facebook.com emails? I am not talking only about John Doe here, whom will place its faith with Facebook to guard its emails for life, but to all the family, friends, acquaintances and business partners of John Doe that will email him on a regular basis. After all Facebook will have to guard these folks’ privacy too!