It's about time! I wonder if this is due to the fact that if email encryption becomes common, the content will be inaccessible to Google anyway.

How many people have you seen who exchange encrypted email on a regular basis (or even at all)?

I doubt it. That's a pretty big "if".

If they're not using it for ads, there's a good chance that it's in Google's best interest to not know the contents of people's email. It lessens the impact of a potential breach, and it greatly simplifies their responses to gov't requests to 'we have no method to access this data, you must contact the account holder directly'.

And then Google gets inundated from angry customers who forget their password or key for the encryption of their emails.

Why are you in such a hurry?

Crowdsourcing science! Good idea? Discuss.