Hysteria, Legislation, and Gmail

There used to be a software development joke about printing t-shirts before you even ship the product. The point was about getting priorities out of sequence. (Someone want to post the joke in comments?).

Now we have all kinds of hue and cry, (what is that) and even threats of legislation, about a beta version of a free product with 0% market-share which will only be used by people who sign up for it voluntarily. It won’t be long before all the napkins at coffee shops digitally transmit any doodles directly to the government for review so we can stop innovation right where it starts.