Gmail not Safe, Google not Comprehensive

I. Gmail Not Safe   Gmail has a gaping security hole, hitherto ignored by pundits, users, and Google (the company that owns and operates Gmail) itself.   The login page of Gmail sports an SSL "lock". This means that all the information exchanged with Gmail's servers - the user's name and password - is encrypted. A hacker who intercepted the communicated data would find it difficult and time-consuming to decrypt them.   Yet, once past the login page, Gmail reverts to plain text, non-encrypted pages. These can easily be tapped into by hackers, especially when such data travels over unsecured, unencrypted wireless networks ('hot spots"). To make clear: while a hacker may not be able to get hold of your username and password, he can still read all your e-mail messages!   Google is aware of this vulnerability. Tucked at the bottom of the "account settings" page there is a button allowing the user to switch to "https browser session" (in other words, to encrypt all the pages subsequent to the login). Gmail Help advises Gmail users to choose the always-on https option if they are using unsafe computers (for instance, in Internet cafes) and/or non-secure communication networks. They explicitly warn against possible identity theft ("impersonation") and exposure of bank statements and other damaging information if the user does not change his or her default settings.   But how many users tweak their settings in such depth? Very few. Why doesn't Gmail warn its users that they are being switched from the secure login page to a free-for-all, hacker-friendly mode with unencrypted pages? It's anybody's guess. Gmail provide a hint, though: https pages are slower to load. Gmail knowingly sacrifices its users' safety and security on the altar of headline-catching performance.   II. Google not Comprehensive   I have been tracing 154 keywords on Google, most of them over the last seven years. In the last two years, the number of search results for these keywords combined has declined by 37%. For one fifth of these keywords, the number of search results declined by 80% and more! This is at a time of exponential growth in the number of Web pages (not to mention deep databases).   All keywords pertain to actual topics and to individuals who have never ceased their activity. The keywords are not clustered or related and cover disparate topics such as mental health; US foreign policy; Balkan history and politics; philosophy and ethics; economics and finance, etc.   The conclusion is inescapable: Google's coverage has declined precipitously in quantitative terms. This drop in search results also pertains to Google News.   I chose 10 prime news Websites and used their own, on-site search engines to generate results for my list of keywords. Thus, from each news Website, I obtained a list of articles in which one of my keywords featured in the title. The Websites maintained archive pages for their columnists, so I had also detailed lists of all the articles published by specific columnists on specific news Websites.   I now reverted to Google News. First, I typed the name of the columnist alone and got a total of his or her articles. Then I added the name of the news Website to the query and obtained a sub-total of articles published by the columnist in the chosen news website. The results were shocking: typically, Google News covered less than one third of the articles published by any given columnist and, in many cases, less than one tenth. I then tried the same search on Google and was able to find there many news articles not included in the Google News SERPs (results pages). Yet, even put together, Google and Google News covered less than one half of the items.   When I tried the list of keywords, the results improved, albeit marginally: Google News included about 40% of the articles I found on the various news Websites. Together with Google, the figure rose to 60%.   Still, this means that Google News excludes more than one half of all the articles published on the Web. Add this to Google's Incredibly Shrinking Search Results and we are left with three possible explanations: (1) Google has run out of server space (not likely); (2) Google's algorithms are too exclusive and restrictive (very likely); (3) Google is deploying some kind of content censorship or editorship (I found no trace of such behavior).