Asides from the interview @ eweek below, we"ve got some other interesting news regarding Google. It should be noted that there is speculation that Google will be announcing (finally) their IPO launch on Monday; wait until next week for the press frenzy that will surround it. Also to be announced on Monday : Blueyonder, UK cable provider, is apparently increasing their packages (for free) by 50%. E.g. if you are on 1 meg, you"d go to 1.5 meg, 512k to ~700k. Although nothing has been confirmed ("press release on monday"), Telewest employees have commented "the email clearly stated not to be discussed externally until 26th" - you decide! We"ll see what happens on Monday. But back to Google :
"Gmail, Google"s new Web-based e-mail service, has sparked commentary, controversy and even calls for congressional action. eWEEK"s Steve Gillmor explored the perils and possibilities of the free software-as-service in an exclusive conversation with Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Obviously, there are privacy implications of Gmail that I do want to touch on, but I"m just as interested in the opportunities for programmability of this technology. If you could establish an API for this, that would be something really spectacular.
That"s an interesting idea. I haven"t thought too much prior to your mentioning it now, but there are certainly a variety of processes that I have in the past done with Unix, because I can basically program it to do all kinds of things with my e-mail—forward certain messages automatically, erase other ones automatically, trigger programs—and it would be interesting to consider doing those here."
Annoyingly, the interviewer seems more concerned in places with plugging his xml web services tool than really asking Brin about Gmail and its new features, but none the less a good technical article.