you don't seriously think many people really do that?
i myself actually did read their terms, and immediately cancelled my gmail account. but most people won't care and just happily give their data away.

i am sufficiently adept to know how to surf anonymously, and google is one of the main reasons i am doing that.

i'm not saying that's ok. far from it. but since we're comparing google and nokia, i think it's a valid point.

i don't know enough about the finnish constitution to make a judgement on that, and my only source of information is the one link you posted, so i have to take your word for it. this article does however take a very clear position on the matter, without giving voice to other points of view or even elaborating about the law itself that has been passed.
and this sentence: "The employer would not be allowed to read the content of the messages themselves, however." makes me a bit sceptical about how deep of an intrusion this really is...


i can tell you how this sort of thing is handled in my publicly owned austrian-based company. we don't really have competitive trade secrets, so that's not that much of an issue, but it does pop up now and then.
we do allow personal use of company infrastructure (as in surfing and mail), and our sysadmins are not allowed to touch private traffic as long as personal use is tolerated.
however, if they determine that there IS abuse of corporate infrastructure, there is the possibility to deny ANY private traffic, in which case the sysadmins would be allowed to log and check mails from that point forward. as i said, in our case it's not so much about stealing secrets but about overusing for private matters. still, we have the discussion of completely prohibiting personal use regularly.

i have tried to make the point that monopolies are a dangerous thing by themselves, and if you don't recognize that google is building up and controlling monopolies, you probably really wear those glasses
i don't care about any mythical year numbers or anything like that, i care about what i know.

i know that google is mining data and reusing it over and over (they openly say so in their terms of use), and i know that by now they have become big enough with a big enough user- (=data-) base to be a serious threat (as a monopoly).

on one hand you complain about nokia not respecting it's employees' privacy, on the other hand you don't care that google does it on a much, much, MUCH larger scale...