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New Gmail Feature Allows Anyone On Google+ To Email You & Vice Versa, But Opt Out Is Provided

Google is today making a change to Gmail that will further bake in Google+ to its webmail product in a way that's actually somewhat practical, though also potentially invasive.

TechCrunch Sarah Perez

Context & Ripple Effects

This is the next step in Google's campaign to make Google+ unavoidable: since new Google accounts have been required to include both Gmail and a Google+ profile since early 2012, and before that Google had already used invite mechanics inside Google+ to pull connections in. With those pipes in place, today's change uses them — any Google+ member can reach any Gmail address by default.

The move lands on a charged day for Google's privacy posture: its top privacy official simultaneously declared the EU's data-protection overhaul 'dead' and urged politicians to start over, per the same-day reporting. The breadth of pickup — the Gmail Blog alongside NYT Bits, PC World, Gizmodo, The Verge and others — suggests the default-on design is what made this travel, not the feature itself.

First-order effects

  • Every Gmail user who does nothing becomes reachable by any Google+ member, so the burden of protecting the inbox shifts from sender-side consent to recipient-side opt-out hunting.

Second-order effects

  • The opt-out-only design hands EU regulators a concrete exhibit just as Google is publicly fighting their data-protection overhaul, raising the cost of its 'flawed rules' argument.
  • Google+ gets a fresh relevance mechanism: with mandatory signup already in place since 2012, email delivery now gives the network a daily-use surface it lacked.

Third-order effects

  • If the pattern holds, platform defaults — not user choice at signup — become the main way identity graphs get consolidated, validating the old thesis that email and phone contacts are the real social graph.
  • Default-setting choices are positioned to become a formal regulatory subject in Europe, with opt-in versus opt-out treated as the compliance question rather than the feature itself.

The trend: Google is fusing its product lines through the Google+ identity layer by resetting defaults rather than asking permission, making the opt-out toggle the emerging front line of consumer privacy disputes.

Related: Gmail · Google · New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+ · Google Now Lets Those In Google+ Offically Invite Others

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