(I promise that this will be the last Gmail-related post before I get to my review of the service…)

Over at Slate, Paul Boutin suggests that Google offer some sort of option for users that don’t want to see ads next to their email, and I agree entirely. At the end of the account signup process, Google should pose the question, “Do you agree to have contextual ads placed on the same page as email messages?” And when users choose “No,” then the next screen should say, “We’re sorry, but you’re asking us to provide you with a free service, but not allowing us to serve the ads that make the service free. That kind of thinking is what fueled all those idiotic ideas that you mocked during the dot-com boom. Might we recommend an account over at Hotmail or Yahoo!? Because we’re not going to give you one here at Gmail. Sure, the ads over at Hotmail and Yahoo! may be larger, have little to no chance to be of interest to you, use Flash, and ask you to punch monkeys, and sure, those services may even insert ads at the bottom of your outgoing messages, and better yet, sure, those services offer you a fraction of the storage space and nothing close to the power of Google’s searching abilities, but… well, there’s no but. Hope you enjoy your experience there!”

That would be perfect.