IN the spring of 2004, with business booming and Google basking in the glow of its ever-growing popularity, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company’s founders, prepared to dazzle internet users with a different kind of e-mail.

They called the new service “Gmail” (in Britain it is known as Google Mail after a trademark dispute).

They built it to be smarter, cheaper and easier to use. To make the new service an instant hit, they planned to give away one free gigabyte (1,000 megabtyes) of storage on Google’s own network with each Gmail account.

That was 500 times greater than the free storage offered by Microsoft and 250 times the free storage offered by Yahoo. This was a service Google could afford to provide because of the way it built its own high-powered computer network.

To inject Gmail with that Googley sense of magic, computer users would be able to find e-mails instantly, without ever having to think about sorting or storing them. A Gmail search would be fast, accurate and as easy to perform as a Google search.

Unlike most of its new products, Gmail was designed to make money even during the test phase. With demand for advertising increasing, the company needed to increase the amount of space it could sell.

It made sense to Brin and Page to profit from Gmail by putting the same kind of small ads on the right-hand side of Gmails that Google put on the right-hand side of search results. The ads would be “contextually relevant”, triggered by words contained in the e-mails.

Looking at the world through Google-coloured lenses, this seemed like a superb idea in every respect.

It didn’t occur to Brin, Page or any of the other senior engineers at Google that people would strenuously object to the privacy implications of having Google’s computers reading their e-mails and then placing ads in them based on the content of those messages. They remained oblivious to the political reality that awaited them.

At risk was Google’s good name and reputation. For the two founders, who prided themselves on being well-informed, it would be a harsh lesson in the dangers of being too clever and too cloistered.

As word spread of Google’s plans to put ads in e-mails, politicians and privacy groups attacked the company, kicking off a media firestorm. In Massachusetts, anti-Gmail legislation was introduced. Shocked privacy advocates urged the company to pull the product immediately and began circulating anti-Google petitions. One California lawmaker threatened the company, saying that if Google didn’t dump Gmail, she would press for legislation banning it.

For the first time, Google was being viewed with suspicion. People considered their e-mails private, and the notion of Google putting ads in them based on their content seemed to cross the line.

Brin and Page never foresaw the prospect of hostile or negative reactions. Google’s carefully honed image as a force for freedom ran headlong into visions of the search giant playing Big Brother and looking over the shoulders of computer users sending e-mails.