Yahoo and Google to collaborate on encrypted email

Yahoo and Google are to join forces to create an encrypted email system that cannot even bedecrypted by the companies themselves.The system, which should be ready by next year, will supposedly make it impossible for governments or hackers to gain access to users' emails. Most of the battles on this front have so far been spearheaded primarily by open-source communities and those that have spoken out staunchly in defence of personal privacy and against government surveillance.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo didn't even have a senior management-level executive dedicated to information security until February of this year, but the fact that Google and Microsoft have both pledged to work on encrypted email is no doubt exerting pressure on smaller providers to up their game. Yahoo claims to have 110 million unique email users, which is around a quarter of those boasted by Microsoft, which has 400 million active Outlook and Hotmail users, and Google, which boasts 425 million Gmail users.

Clearly the time has come for big companies like Google and Yahoo to bring advanced privacy technology to those who have ultimately lost faith in the industry's willingness to keep personal correspondence private. Following the revelations contained in documents leaked by Edward Snowden that tech companies were complicit in helping the NSA's spying activities, this marks a huge turnaround. But the relationship between governments and big tech companies now seems to be severely strained.

Encryption will apparently be an optional feature of Google and Yahoo's service and will rely on PGP, meaning that customers will store their own encryption keys. It seems that rather than encryption running through the core of the service, it will work as a plugin.

In the past PGP-encrypted email has been difficult to use, so in one respect it's good to see mainstream companies making it more accessible. But while the content of messages will be harder to get at, it's important that companies explain clearly to their customers exactly what they are protecting. For one thing, it is only the content of email messages that will be encrypted, not the data about who messages are being sent and received by. It's necessary to remember that this kind of data is still of interest and value to spy agencies.

By providing users with an encrypted email service, it may well be the case that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo will no longer be able to comply with government requests to hand over content of emails. No doubt this will cause legal wranglings, but in trying to undo the damage that the Snowden revelations have inflicted on their reputations and customer relationships, the companies will hopefully.

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