As of today (6 January 2009), Google has been ranked as the third worst "spam service ISP" by Spamhaus.org.Besides not doing enough to stop dodgy drug companies redirecting unwary consumers through Google Docs, the company has been serving as a major host to those intent on committing advance-fee fraud (one example being the "Nigerian" or "419 letter"), mule fraud (in this case, setting up an email account as a fake "intermediary" or escrow service to dupe an unsuspecting punter), and excessive spamvertising through its Gmail and Blogger services.
No respectable ISP wants to be seen as pro-spam, but the fact is that some companies permit spammers and scammers to operate through their networks. Simple greed could be the motive, or it could be that some companies simply are not targetting their resources effectively to minimise the abuse of their networks.
Microsoft used to be a regular visitor to Spamhaus's dubious top ten, but they seem to have sorted themselves out. According to Richard Cox of Spamhaus, "Microsoft got rid of the bad guys, and off they went to Google, which is now hosting a lot of the stuff that was on Microsoft's domains."
Google, it seems, has a way to go.
Update (7 January 2009): Google has, impressively and apparently overnight, disappeared entirely from Spamhaus's top ten.
I usually don't even play with the filters and get at least 30 spams a day. Not to mention just plainly how lousy Googles servers are anyway. One of the slowest loading web mails on the net.
For a good while now they have offered Internet service in california via wireless networks for free I believe
spamhaus are fools, They penalise entire organisations when a few of their users send spam. Any large provider of an email service will have some spam, its a fact of life, penalising 99.9% because of a couple of the indiscressions of a few is a totally ridiculous.
And a lot of people get confused as to getting spam in their gmail accounts - this has nothing to do with that - yes they do have some of the best spam filters for email but the problem is with people using their services to send spam out.
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