Google May Shut Germans Out Of GMail

googlegerman.jpgGoogle may shut German users out of Gmail in response to new laws passed by the German Government that would force Google to maintain personally identifiable records for every German Gmail account.

Google Blogscoped reports that the effect of the law on Google is not clear but potentially it may force Google to start requiring a verifiable full address from every single German based Gmail user.

Google’s Peter Fleischer said that the law is odds to Google’s policy to offer anonymous email accounts: “Many users around the globe make use of this anonymity to defend themselves from spam, or government repression of free speech … If the web community won’t trust us with handling their data with great care, we’ll go down in no time”.

There’s got to be something ironic about a country in the European Union, the EU being the so-called champions of privacy, imposing laws like this. Perhaps our German readers can enlighten us some more in the comments.