November 14, 2011, 3:33 PM — Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in 2004 that the problem of spam would be solved within two years. It seemed unlikely at the time, and in fact 2006 came and went without so much as a dip in the crushing load of unwanted email advertising.
Meanwhile, unwanted telemarketing calls were on the rise five years ago. The future of junk e-mail and unwanted marketing calls looked bleak, with no relief in sight.
That's why I was shocked to realize this week that I really don't get much spam anymore. And I can't remember the last time I got a telemarketing call of any kind.
I asked my Google+ friends about how much spam and telemarketing they get, and most reported the same thing. The flood of spam has been reduced to a trickle.
Was Bill Gates right, but late? Has the spam problem been solved?
How Google killed spam
I started using Gmail the year Bill Gates said spam would be solved -- 2006. Even back then as an invite-only beta service, Gmail had a pretty good reputation for dealing with spam. But it was far from perfect.
For the first couple of years using the service, I remember having to cope with quite a lot of spam. At the time, I was getting at least 30 spams a day in my inbox. I also had to go into the Gmail Junk E-mail folder to cope with the inevitable "false positives" -- good email misidentified as spam. I usually found two or three of those a day.
Eventually, I stopped finding false positives. Every once in a while, I go in and pour through the Junk E-mail folder, and I never find any good e-mail there anymore.
Gmail spam filtering got better over time. But from about 2008 to some time recently, I remember being annoyed at how many 419 "Nigerian scam" emails made it into my inbox. You know, email with all-caps subject lines like "I NEED YOUR URGENT RESPONSE" with a sob story about being the child of the late so-and-so who deposited millions in some bank account, and they need my help to get it out.
I remember thinking, why can't Google identify these very distinctive emails?
I also used to get spam in Russian, Chinese or some other language I don't speak. Again, since I reported every single Russian email I got as spam, why couldn't Google's otherwise amazing algorithms figure out that all the email I get in Russian is spam?
I don't know when it happened. A year ago? Six months? I didn't really notice. But at some point, I stopped getting this spam.
It hasn't stopped completely. I still get two or three spams a day in my inbox, usually promotions to buy or distribute, oddly enough, electronics from Asia or some other far-away place.
But still. It's pretty great. And it's gotten even better lately. Google recently rolled out better controls in Gmail for filtering. And the company announced a new feature where a block on a person from one service also blocks them on another. For example, when you block someone on Google+, they're also blocked on Gmail. Nice!
A small minority of Google+ respondents say they still get way too much spam, even on Gmail. Users of Microsoft's Hotmail service report still getting massive amounts of email spam. (Gates's prediction came true for everyone but Microsoft users, I guess.) So services vary.
And spam shows up on non-email media, including SMS, faxes, Facebook and elsewhere. But as far as I can tell, the email spam problem has been largely solved -- maybe not for everyone, but for many.
How Google killed telemarketing
Telemarketing calls are down all-around, according to my informal poll. One big reason is the National Do Not Call Registry in the United States, which started being seriously enforced in 2005, and similar initiatives worldwide. The Registry lets anyone register a phone number, which places it on a do-not-call list that is illegal to spam.
The registry reduced, but did not end telemarketing calls. However, in my own case, such calls have stopped entirely. I haven't received a telemarketing call in at least a year.
The reason is that I use Google Voice, which is a free telephone service by Google that gives you a number for people to call. Your actual phone number can be kept secret.
